Hannes Meyer was a Swiss architect and the second director of the Bauhaus, and in Dessau he designed a row of houses that put his ideas into concrete form. The Laubenganghäuser in Törten, finished around 1930, are blocks of flats reached by external walkways, the balcony access, so that each floor has a long open gallery along the front. It was a cheap, efficient way to give small flats light and ventilation, and it was an experiment in social housing, in an age when a decent flat was a political question.
The houses stand in Dessau-Törten, a district south of the town centre, close to the earlier estate that Walter Gropius had built in the mid-1920s, in which each house was assembled from standardised parts using a kind of production line. Together they show the Bauhaus's practical side, with the focus on ordinary housing, not just on grand design. The Bauhaus buildings in Dessau, including the school itself, are on the World Heritage list.
Dessau lies on the Mulde near its meeting with the Elbe, in a flat, green region of floodplain forests and meadows, part of the Middle Elbe biosphere reserve. The roads here are straight and gentle, lined with old trees and often busy with local traffic, and the surface is mostly good. It is a landscape that suits a relaxed ride, with long views and big skies, and the Wörlitz park, a short ride to the east, is one of the great English-style gardens of Germany.
Dessau has over seventy thousand people, so fuel and food are easy, though the housing estate itself is a residential area where you should park quietly and respect the residents. There is a good selection of cafés near the Bauhaus where you can have lunch and look at the sunlit glass of the famous workshop wing.
The ride pairs this house with another early modern housing estate, creating a small tour of how the twentieth century learned to build homes. Come on a dry day in spring or autumn, when the low light picks out the long balconies and the white walls.