Hannes Meyer was an advocate of functionalism and social reform in modern architecture. Meyer’s "scientific" rationalism and negation of aesthetics continue to inspire Marxist theorists today (Hays, 1992). Denied greater individual fame by his preference for collective work over personal originality ("I never design alone," he declared), Meyer's continued notoriety stems from several uncompromisingly Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) projects and his stormy Bauhaus directorate, when the school's endgame commenced.

Shortly after establishing his practice in Basel in 1919, Meyer built a progressive garden housing estate, the Freidorf Siedlung at Muttenz, near Basel (1919-21), for the Swiss Co-operative Union. Outwardly Palladian (as seen through provincial Jura eyes), Freidorf's planning nonetheless exemplified social collectivism, particularly through its intense seriality, nascent standardization, and sectionally sophisticated communal hall.

Through the early 1920s, Basel nurtured a left-wing architectural group, the ABC, formed around the peripatetic Russian artist and designer El Lissitzky. Meyer's first avant-garde endeavor after joining ABC, the Co-op series, consisted of exhibition/performance pieces extolling collectivist virtues. His Co-op Vitrine (1925) contained arrays of 36 mass-produced items from cooperative factories as a commentary on the anonymity of the worker in the production economy; his Co-op Zimmer (1926) was a spare indictment of bourgeois interiors, and his Co-op Theater comprised life-sized marionettes and actors miming socialist themes.

Meyer also practiced architecture with fellow ABC radical Hans Wittwer. Their uncompromisingly functionalist inventions briefly captivated the international avant-garde. The Basel Petersschule Competition entry (1927) was a stark, skylit, industrial box that stood detached within the city, furiously sprouting cantilevered playgrounds, stairs, and transparent walkways. Meyer loved formulae; calculations of illumination levels within the classrooms constituted three-quarters of the presentation. Meyer's and Wittwer's Geneva League of Nations Competition entry (1926-27) wrapped a brutal aggregation of functional components within the echelons of a neutral construction module. Fire stairs widened while descending the building to accommodate the increasing occupant load. Although both projects bore traces of Russian Constructivist aesthetics (gratuitous masts, glass elevators, structural hysterics), the overall impression was of facts bereft of metaphysical illusion—of architecture as sachlich (objective, literally "thingly"). Meyer and Wittwer's extremism cast objectivity as ideological: Their rejection of formal rhetoric became, paradoxically, rhetorical.

These unrealized schemes attracted the attention of Bauhaus Director Walter Gropius. At the December 1926 opening of the Bauhaus's Dessau facility, Gropius asked Meyer to initiate the school’s long-delayed pedagogical intention of launching a building department. Meyer, although hesitant over what he interpreted as an overly sectarian and aesthetic cast of the Bauhaus work, agreed. Immediately, Meyer developed projects for collaborative student exercises. By 1 April 1928, Gropius resigned, naming the charismatic yet schismatic Meyer as his successor. Meyer, feeling that Gropius’s Werkbund mentality pandered to the aesthetic tastes of the bourgeoisie, declared his opposition to formalism in 1928, writing, “Building is only organization: social, technical, economic, psychological organization."

Meyer transformed all workshops toward production. Under his reign, income from the school’s products rose. Student pay increased, allowing poorer students to attend. Meyer indirectly encouraged a growing Communist student cell.

Architectural training inexorably gained the upper hand and became increasingly scientific (solar angle studies, structural calculations, flow diagrams). Just as he was named director, Meyer, in collaboration with Bauhaus students, won a "worker’s school" (the Bundesschule) competition from the General German Trade Unions Federation (Bernau, 1928-30). In the school, which became Meyer's major realized work, he radicalized the building’s plan, creating staggered housing volumes that organized the Federation’s students into “brigades.” The industrial materials (reinforced concrete, brick walling, steel windows) and the expressed circulation recalled his earlier objective proposals. Another collaborative opportunity with students soon followed, the Dessau-Törten Housing Development (in Dessau, 1930). But lacking varied communal spaces, the result here verged on banal.

The remaining Bauhaus master-teachers undermined Meyer, using as a final pretext his encouragement of the Communist cell’s activities during a miners' strike. Dessau’s mayor summarily dismissed Meyer on 1 August 1930. Many scholars use Meyer’s dismissal as a benchmark of the rising influence of Fascism in the Weimar Republic.

With several like-minded Bauhaus students, Meyer sought a proletarian culture in Russia. From 1930 to 1933, he was a professor at Moscow's VASI, a newly reorganized architectural laboratory. He designed several unbuilt school projects and worked with planning groups on massive satellite towns. Factional tensions and reorganizations drove him to the newly founded Moscow Academy of Architecture during 1934-35. Stalin’s imposition of Social Realism gradually ended Meyer's teaching opportunities and hopes of progressive architectural work; by 1936, even his involvement in planning became untenable.

Dejected, Meyer sought solace in native Switzerland in 1936, opening a Geneva practice. The Swiss Co-operative Union offered him another commission, the 1938-39 Mühleberg children’s convalescent home, his only realized, post-Bauhaus architectural work.

After attending several town planning congresses in Mexico, Meyer was called to Mexico City by President Cárdenas on 1 June 1939 to direct the newly founded Institute of Urbanism and Planning, which was closed due to financial difficulties by 1941. Despite a lifelong array of prestigious academic opportunities, Meyer never spent more than three years at any institution. He languished another eight years in Mexico, joining public agencies for schools and clinics, serving intermittently on governmental planning commissions, and entering competitions. His health failing, in 1949, he returned again to Switzerland and explored theoretical studies until his death.

RANDALL OTT

Sennott R.S. Encyclopedia of twentieth century architecture, Vol.2 (G-O).  Fitzroy Dearborn., 2005.