The first representative of the school was Johannes Kister, Dean of the Faculty of Architecture at Anholt University. This faculty is the parent organization of the Bauhaus, therefore Mr. Kister is also responsible for all the architectural divisions of the school. He said that the architecture school of Dessau is very young. The school is located in an old Bauhaus building, and the spirit of its famous predecessor is very strong here. However, on the other hand, we live in a new time, for which a different architectural discourse is important. According to Johannes Kister, the school in Dessau is not a place where they offer ready-made architectural solutions, but a place for a permanent discourse, moreover, an international one: people from different countries come here to take part in creative communication.
Rector of the Higher School of Architecture in Dessau, Alfred Jacobi, spoke about the course of study under the Master of Architecture program, which has been taught at the school for the past 10 years. The program lasts 2 years, 12 weeks per semester and 33 hours of lessons, the maximum of which is studio work. They pay close attention to computer-aided design and presentation of architectural projects. As additional courses, students can take such subjects as landscape design, urbanism, architecture and cinema, space and volume, etc. All courses are very different, but they are united by one common idea - the same already mentioned architectural discourse, which, as Alfred Jacobi said, contains three main components: historical context, structural context and parametric context.
The next speaker was Gunnart Hartmann, professor at the Dessau School of Architecture, who spoke about his course "Architectural Theory". In his opinion, architectural theory cannot exist on its own; it is an interdisciplinary course that also includes the theory of modern design, painting, etc. The course touches upon architecture, space, city, the presence of time in architecture. In the past, architectural theory was heavily dependent on the social context. Today, globalization and politics affect space.
Daniel Dendra, professor at the Dessau School of Architecture, began his presentation by thanking all the architects who participated in the competition for the ZeppelinStation for their excellent designs. Dendra is one of four professors at the school who runs a separate studio, which he detailed in his speech. “Students spend most of their study time in the studio, so there is usually an eerie mess. students almost live there,”the professor remarked with humor. Dendra also noted the multinational composition of students, among whom there are almost no Germans: people come to the Dessau school to study from Jamaica, from the Arab countries, Thailand, Mexico, China, Poland, etc. Each of the four studios lives by its own specific principles, which are established by its leader, and Daniel Dendra spoke about the principles of his studio.
In his studio, students first need to explain their work in terms of program and idea. Then a lot of time is spent on building analytical charts. As Dendra noted, everything new that appears in architecture, new materials, new books is very important for him, all this he discusses with students in each semester. At the end of the training, students make a presentation of their graduation projects. The professor showed some of the student's work in his studio. Last semester there was a task to design a museum for ready-made - with unlimited scope for imagination and freedom for students to do what they want. Daniel Dendra invited them to start from "reading the city and its qualities." So, one of the students - Cecilia Kasper came up with something like a machine that analyzes lost objects and their movement in the city, and Sarah Elefaifa, a student from Egypt, came up with a building, the module for which is assembled from frames lost in the city on benches or in buses umbrellas.
The lecture by the Higher School of Architecture in Dessau can be considered an official invitation to Russian students of architecture universities to obtain a Master of Architecture degree in the modern Bauhaus and to participate in the international discourse about which so much has been said in this lecture.
