WALTER GROPIUS

1883-1969
• Walter Gropius, in full Walter Adolph Gropius, (born May 18, 1883,
Berlin, Ger.—died July 5, 1969, Boston, Mass., U.S.).
• German American architect and educator who, particularly as
director of the Bauhaus (1919–28), exerted a major influence on the
development of modern architecture.
• His works, many executed in collaboration with other architects,
included the school building and faculty housing at the Bauhaus
(1925–26), the Harvard University Graduate Center, and the United
States Embassy in Athens.
Youth And Early Training
• Gropius, the son of an architect father, studied architecture at the
technical institutes in Munich (1903–04) and in Berlin–Charlottenburg
(1905–07).
• He worked briefly in an architectural office in Berlin (1904) and saw
military service (1904–05).
• Before completing school he built his first buildings, farm labourers’
cottages in Pomerania (1906).
• For a year he traveled in Italy, Spain, and England, and in 1907 he
joined the office of the architect Peter Behrens in Berlin.
• Gropius acknowledged that his work with Behrens and the design problems he
undertook for a German electricity company did much to shape his lifelong
interest in progressive architecture and the interrelationship of the arts.
• From the time he left Behrens in 1910 until 1914, Gropius developed a clear
commitment to and talent for organization and a dedication to promoting his
ideas on the arts.
• In 1911 he became a member of the German Labour League (Deutscher
Werkbund), which had been founded in 1907 to ally creative designers with
machine production. Gropius argued for such building techniques as
prefabrication of parts and assembly on the site.
• However much he accepted the inevitability and restrictions of mechanization,
he felt it was up to the artistically trained designer to “breathe a soul into the
dead product of the machine.”
• He was against imitation, snobbery, and dogma in the arts and cautioned against
such oversimplification as the notion that the function of a product should
determine its appearance.
• Gropius’ growing intellectual leadership was complemented by his
design of two significant buildings, both done in collaboration with
Adolph Meyer: the Fagus Works at Alfeld-an-der-Leine (1911) and the
model office and factory buildings in Cologne (1914) done for the
Werkbund Exposition.
• The Fagus Works, bolder than any of Behrens’ works, is marked by
large areas of glass wall broken by visible steel supports, the whole
done with little affectation.
• The Cologne buildings were more formal, some say influenced by the
American architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Together these two buildings
testify to Gropius’ design maturity prior to World War I.
BAUHAUS PERIOD
• Even before the end of the war, the city of Weimar approached Gropius for
his ideas on art education.
• In April 1919 he became director of the Grand Ducal Saxon School of Arts
and Crafts, the Grand Ducal Saxon Academy of Arts, and the Grand Ducal
Saxon School of Arts, which were immediately united as Staatliches
Bauhaus Weimar (“Public Bauhaus Weimar”). Gropius’ acceptance of this
appointment was the most decisive step in his career.
• With his temperament for the practical world of art, politics, and
administration, Gropius succeeded in establishing a viable new approach to
design education, one that became an international prototype and
eventually supplanted the 200-year-old supremacy of the French École des
Beaux-Arts.
• A key tenet of Gropius’ Bauhaus teaching was the requirement that the
architect and designer undergo a practical crafts training to acquaint
himself with materials and processes.
• Although the program was to have been a comprehensive one, budget
limitations permitted only a portion of the crafts shops to open. No formal
study of architecture was offered at Weimar.
• Despite the early Werkbund principle of joining art with industry, much
activity centred on handicrafts, such as ceramics, weaving, and stained-
glass design.
• Many painters and sculptors joined the staff: Paul Klee, Lyonel Feininger,
Wassily Kandinsky, Gerhard Marcks, and, later, László Moholy-Nagy and
Josef Albers—altogether an astonishing roster of artists.
• Somehow it did not seem incongruous for artists to be teaching
applied design. As an introduction to design principles, a beginning
course, Vorkurs, was developed by the Swiss painter and sculptor
Johannes Itten, which itself became the most widely copied aspect of
the Bauhaus curriculum.
• Students explored two- and three-dimensional design using a variety
of simple materials, such as wire, wood, and paper.
• The psychological effects of form, colour, and texture were studied as
well. Although his instructors were gifted, it was Gropius’ own
persistence that made this educational experiment work.
• Historians disagree on the character of the early Bauhaus years. Certainly
in 1919–22 Bauhaus students were allowed to express subjective feelings
in their art; individuality and expressionism were not uncommon.
• The prewar Gropius belief that art must conform to and express the
economic character and rational order of modern society seemed to be
submerged in a new belief that the greatness of art stood above utilitarian
considerations.
• A reverse shift came in 1922, not without controversy; Itten left, and a
more rational and objective approach returned. The individually made
products were intended as prototypes for machine production, and some
designs were produced commercially.
• They emphasized geometrical forms, smooth surfaces, regular
outlines, primary colours, and modern materials—all of which, to
many eyes, epitomized impersonality in art.

• It is this last phase of Bauhaus output that is publicly accepted as

characteristic of Bauhaus “style,” although Gropius himself
disdained the use of the word “concept.”

• Gropius saw architecture and design as ever changing, always related to

the contemporary world. He spoke of the architect’s duty to encompass
the total visual environment. He himself designed furniture, a railroad
car, and an automobile. He emphasized housing and city planning, the
usefulness of sociology, and the necessity of using teams of specialists.
• In 1925 the Bauhaus moved to Dessau with the promise of better financial
support and an escape from the growing antagonism of the conservative Weimar
community. In Dessau, Gropius designed the school building and faculty housing
(1925–26).
• The school itself is a key monument of modern architecture and Gropius’ best-
known building. Its dynamic composition, asymmetrical plan, smooth white walls
set with horizontal windows, and flat roof are features associated with the so-
called International Style of the 1920s.
• Gropius resigned as director of the Bauhaus in 1928 to return to practice
privately as an architect in Berlin. During 1929–30 he designed a portion of a
housing colony in Berlin–Siemensstadt.
• Gropius’ regular facades of enormous length, together with a rigid orientation,
illustrate an excessively intellectual solution with a “curse of uniformity,” which
Gropius himself decried in later years.
Fagus-Werk Factory, built in 1911 TOWER EAST

Bauhaus School Building, Dessau

GROPIUS HOUSE METLIFE BUILDING

Josephine M. Hagerty House

BAUHAUS ARCHIVE HARVARD GRADUATE CENTRE

INTERBAU,BERLIN US EMBASSY, ATHENES GREECE

REFERENCES
• https://study.com/academy/lesson/walter-gropius-biography-
buildings-works.html