Part 6 in the Series: ‘Can the Box Make the World a Better Place?’

In 1923, inspired by the units within a honeycomb, the Bauhaus designed Haus am Horn. As with the box, a hexagon can be repeated infinitely without gaps or overlap, making it ideal for dense architectural development.

Built to coincide with the Bauhaus exhibition and conceived as the ideal single-family home, Haus am Horn was intended as a prototype for a large housing estate. The house was designed to have one central living unit with additional ‘living cells’ attached to its six sides, but as work progressed, the Bauhaus discovered the box, and the honeycomb design of Haus am Horn was abandoned.

So how did the box end up being chosen over the hexagon? Walter Gropius, Director of the Bauhaus at the time, said Haus am Horn was built with the intention of achieving:

The greatest comfort with the greatest economy by the application of the best craftsmanship and the best distribution of space in form, size and articulation.

Gropius was a man motivated by efficiency, and he believed machine-led construction would enable him to create a home that fulfilled the above brief. He supported the hexagonal Haus am Horn but as development progressed, it became clear the design brought complications.

Fitting the intended eight additional living units around a six-sided central room proved too complex, and achieving this with machinery just added to the complexity. For the sake of a more simple construction for both humans and machines, Gropius decided to reduce the number of walls to four and Haus am Horn was completed.

It was never mass-produced as intended, but it marked the beginning of the Bauhaus’ obsession with the box in architecture, and it inspired the later development of the Törten Housing Estate, as seen in Part 3 and Part 4.

Image courtesy of joseph beuys hat on flickr