ARCHITECTURE AND CITY PLANNING OF KONRAD PÜSCHEL

Learning at the Bauhaus

In 1926, when the Bauahaus building in Dessau was completed, Konrad Püschel received an admission letter from Walter Gropius and began his studies at the Bauhaus the following year. He studied there until 1930, the year Mies van der Rohe replaced the previous director Hannes Meyer. For Püschel, the Bauhaus was a platform for new architecture and the artistic spirit, where the joy of youth was full of life all over the place. There were professors of a reverent spirit and vitality: Lyonel Feininger, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, and Oskar Schlemmer moved from Weimar, and their students – Josef Albers and Marcel Breuer – were selected as Jungmeister, making a contribution to the formation of art and design of the time. Püschel called the Bauhaus school building ‘Bauhauskapelle’. ▼1

However, the architecture department was not established as part of the Bauhaus curriculum until 1927. Previously, Gropius had taken charge of the architecture department, but unlike other fields of study, its educational principles were not established. Even Püschel thought that the Bauhaus was not meeting its goal, which it had set forth when it moved to Dessau. ▼2 Eventually, Gropius appoints his office workforce as faculty members, and also hired Hannes Meyer and Hans Wittwer in order to strengthen the department; there was not enough time for these new professors to devote themselves to teaching. In order to overcome this condition, Püschel participated in an outside-school competition and practice with other students, while appealing to government agencies to improve curriculum and appoint more teachers. In the end, Gropius withdrew from the directorship in February 1928, leaving a brief statement that he was appointing Hannes Meyer as his successor. ▼3

When the Bauhaus entered the era of Hannes Meyer, it became a cradle for Püschel to advance as an architect in his own right. Architectural education became the core