DESSAU-ROßLAU.- Carl Fieger made architectural history with his very first building. The circular house of 1924 remained an experimental building – but it set new standards for housing construction.

Carl Fieger (1893–1960) is chiefly known as a draughtsman for the offices of Peter Behrens and Walter Gropius. He was substantially involved in work on iconic modern buildings such as the Bauhaus Building and the Masters’ Houses in Dessau (Walter Gropius, 1925–26). But Fieger was more than Gropius’s employee. He was an architect with his own signature style, characterised by his radical realisations of minimal flats and his bold colour designs and curves, as seen in the Kornhaus restaurant on the Elber river (1929–1930) and the Fieger House in Dessau (1926/27).

Throughout his life Fieger experimented with standards, norms and prefabricated building components. Consequently, in 1953, while employed by the Deutsche Bauakademie (German academy of architecture), he was responsible for the first Plattenbau in the GDR: built using prefabricated concrete slabs, this hid its method of construction behind a neoclassical facade.

The exhibition leads the visitor through Fieger’s creative period, taking in the major architectural debates of the time: From the early Bauhaus and the debates of the Deutscher Werkbund (German association of craftsmen) about the merits of standardisation versus creative individualism, to Le Corbusier’s concept of the “machine for living in” and the formalism debate in the GDR of the 1950s. With original designs, drawings and furniture and custom made architectural models of his major works, the exhibition provides a comprehensive insight into the architect’s oeuvre for the very first time.

Carl Fieger is thus rediscovered: as an architect in his own right, a furniture designer, brilliant draughtsman and Bauhaus teacher.