Architecture, Commissioned Design Project
Bauhaus Museum Store Weimar

The founding of the Staatliches Bauhaus in 1919 marked a fundamental reorganisation of design education formulated by Walter Gropius in Weimar. Art, craft, and architecture were no longer to be understood as separate disciplines, but as part of a unified design attitude. The Bauhaus conceived design not as a decorative discipline, but as a form of social and spatial responsibility.

A century later, the Bauhaus Museum Weimar established a new site for engaging with these questions. Felix Schwake was commissioned to design the museum store.

The project was not conceived as a conventional retail space, but as a spatial task within a cultural context that is directly linked to questions of function, materiality, and design. The aim was to develop a store that integrates into the open spatial atmosphere of the museum while simultaneously establishing an independent architectural identity.

The design follows a reduced architectural order. Mobile modules, clear geometries, and the full integration of functional requirements define the concept. Architecture and interior are not understood as decorative surface treatment, but as a deliberate spatial structure.

The mobile shelving systems enable different modes of presentation and respond flexibly to changing content and visitor flows. At the same time, the open spatial quality of the museum is preserved. Transparency, materiality, and spatial permeability were central elements of the design.

The work directly continues questions that already concerned the historical Bauhaus: How can craft, design, and use be connected? How is spatial clarity generated? And how can function become an immediate part of architectural form?

The attitude “architecture must be a background for life” forms the foundation of the project. Design is not intended to constantly draw attention to itself, but to create conditions in which perception, movement, and use can occur naturally.

The project for the Bauhaus Museum Weimar thus demonstrates a continuous engagement with the core principles of the Bauhaus — not as a historical stylistic reference, but as a contemporary question of responsibility, material awareness, and the integration of architecture, everyday life, and design.