Haus Am Horn

The Musterhaus Am Horn in Weimar was presented as the central exhibit of the first Bauhaus exhibition in 1923. Designed by Georg Muche, the building was intended to demonstrate how the Bauhaus envisioned future living and working: modular, economical, and equipped with technical installations meant to ease everyday life. For the first time, the school's workshops collaborated across disciplines here; the house is the only fully realized Bauhaus building in Weimar.

The building is located on the street Am Horn at the former eastern edge of the town and stands on a sloping plot with a garden and vegetable beds. Its square plan, roughly 12.70 m per side, covers about 120 m²; a central, double-height living room serves as the house’s atrium. The facades are restrained, finished in a silver-gray fine render and punctuated by asymmetrically arranged bands of windows; the roof structure and the cubic chimney emphasize the cubic form. Outside, a simple terrace lawn and a four-part vegetable garden were the dominant features.

Construction was carried out in a short period: the foundation stone was laid in April 1923 and the building was completed in August 1923; the project was privately financed. After the exhibition the furnishings were initially removed; in the following years the house was sold, expanded and repeatedly repurposed. It remained occupied, underwent alterations and was listed as a protected monument in 1973. A major conservation-led restoration took place in 1998/99, during which later additions were removed and historic features were reconstructed where possible. In 1996 the building, together with other Bauhaus sites, was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Since 2019 the property has been part of the Klassik Stiftung Weimar and is once again regularly accessible as an architectural monument with a permanent exhibition.

The Musterhaus Am Horn conveys central ideas of the Bauhaus: the integration of art, craft and industrial technology, the use of prefabricated building materials, and early forms of the fitted kitchen and domestic engineering. At the same time it documents the controversial reception of these approaches in the 1920s and remains an important testimony to modern domestic culture.