"Today's luxuries are tomorrow's norm", stated Walter Gropius when he described his intentions for the design of the Master Houses which were built in Dessau in 1925 for the Masters of the Bauhaus school. He further elaborated the theme of the perfect living space for a modern household as well as standardization of construction and the use of low-cost building materials, which has already been the object of a study with the Haus am Horn in Weimar.

The master houses consisted of a single house for the Bauhaus director, and three semi-detached two-flat houses for the families of Klee and Kandinsky, Muche and Schlemmer as well as Moholy-Nagy and Feininger. All two-flat houses had the same floor plan. The houses had two-storeys. The ground floor had a living room, an adjacent dining room with access to a terrace and a kitchen. The most spacious room in the house was the studio on the first floor where on e could aldo find the bathroome and the bath rooms.

During WWII, he director's house was completely destroyed and later a house was built in its place. Also the other master houses were run down or demolished, but restoration works, which still continue today, started in 1992 and the houses are now open to the public. The renovates houses are particularly interesting because they show how colourful the interiors were and defeat the myth that the Baus was essentially a black and white affair.