The German-American architect, educator, and designer Walter Gropius (1883-1969) was director of the famed Bauhaus in Germany from 1919 to 1928 and occupied the chair of architecture at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design from 1938 to 1952.

Walter Gropius was born in Berlin on May 18, 1883. Although he studied architecture in Berlin and Munich (1903-1907), he received no degree. He then went to work in Berlin for Peter Behrens, one of several German architects who was influenced by the British Arts and Crafts movement and who attempted to go further by adapting good design to machine production.

In 1910 Gropius set up practice with Adolf Meyer. They designed the Fagus Works in Alfeld an der Leine (1911) and the office building at the Werkbund Exhibition in Cologne (1914), using a combination of masonry and steel construction, from which, in some areas, the external glass sheathing was hung. The plan of the Cologne building was axially designed in the Beaux-Arts tradition, but the major influence was predominantly that of Frank Lloyd Wright, whose "prairie houses" were widely known in Europe through the 1910 and 1911 publications of Ernst Wasmuth in Berlin. Gropius and Meyer were influenced by Wright's style especially in the horizontality and the wide overhanging eaves, but also in the symmetry, the corner pavilions, and the whole spirit of Wright's concept. World War I interrupted their architectural practice, and thereafter they designed only one project prior to Meyer's death in 1924:the unsuccessful entry for the Chicago Tribune Tower competition of 1922.

The Bauhaus

During the war Gropius was invited to become the director of the Grand Ducal Saxon School of Applied Arts and the Saxon Academy of Fine Arts in Weimar, and he took up his duties at war's end. He combined the two schools into the Staatliches Bauhaus (State Building House) in 1919. The aim of the Bauhaus was a "unity of art and technology" to give artistic direction to industry, which was as lacking in 1919 as in the mid-19th century, when the Arts and Crafts movement began. The greatness of Gropius as an educator was that he did not put forward any dogmatic policies, but rather he acted as a balance between the rational, representative, and physical on the one hand and the spiritual, esthetic, and humanitarian on the other. An artistic community of prima donnas is difficult to coordinate, but Gropius acted as choreographer and exacted the best from his faculty, from the mysticism of Johannes Itten to the Marxist socialism of Hannes Meyer.

When right-wing criticism forced the Bauhaus to leave Weimar in 1925, Gropius designed the structure for the new Bauhaus in Dessau, one of his finest works, which embodied a new concept of architectural space. When criticism mounted there against him as director in 1928, he resigned rather than allow the criticism to spread from him as leader to the whole institution. (Nazism and the Bauhaus stood for diametrically opposing viewpoints, and in 1933 under Ludwig Mies van der Rohe the school, which had moved to Berlin, was forced to close.)

Gropius practiced in Berlin from 1928 to 1934, experimenting with prefabricated housing in his Toerten housing development in Dessau (1926) and dwellings at the Werkbund Exhibition (1927). He went to England in 1934, where he worked with E. Maxwell Fry until 1937, designing mainly individual houses, but also Impington College, Cambridgeshire. This structure partially influenced the post-World War II school design program in Britain.

Works in America

When Gropius went to the United States in 1937, he collaborated with Marcel Breuer, a former pupil, on individual and group housing, including a house for himself at Lincoln, Mass. (1937). Gropius held the chair of architecture at Harvard from 1938 to 1952, a period of his life from the age of 55 to 69, when most architects would have been designing their major works. This was due to his intense commitment to the educational process. "I have been 'nobody's baby' during just those years of middle life which normally bring a man to the apex of his career, " Gropius admitted, when he received the American Institute of Architects' Gold Medal in 1959.

Gropius had, however, established The Architects' Collaborative (TAC), a group-oriented practice, in 1946, and he retired from Harvard in 1952 to devote his full attention to the practice of architecture. TAC and Gropius designed the Harvard University Graduate Center (1949-1950); executed a project for the Boston Back Bay Center (1953), which was not carried out; and designed the U.S. Embassy in Athens (1960) and Baghdad University in Iraq (begun 1962 but incomplete as of 1971).

Gropius also designed locomotives and railroad sleeping cars (1913-1914), the Adler automobile (1930), and a host of everyday products. He believed in "the common citizenship of all creative work."

Further Reading

Works on Gropius include Sigfried Giedion, Walter Gropius: Work and Teamwork (1954); Gilbert Herbert, The Synthetic Vision of Walter Gropius (1959); and J. M. Fitch, Walter Gropius (1960). Studies of the Bauhaus are L. Hirshfeld-Mack, The Bauhaus (1963), and Hans M. Wingler, Bauhaus (1969), which is the most detailed and comprehensive study. For bibliographies of Gropius's works see American Association of Architectural Bibliographers, Walter Gropius: A Bibliography, prepared by Caroline Shillaber (1965), and William B. O'Neal, Walter Gropius (1966).

Additional Sources

Isaacs, Reginald R., Gropius: an illustrated biography of the creator of the Bauhaus, Boston:Little, Brown, 1991.

For more information on Walter Adolph Gropius, visit Britannica.com.

(1883-1969)

A leading German architect, designer, and educator, Gropius was one of the most influential figures of Modernism. His ideas were promoted through membership of the Deutscher Werkbund and participation in its critical debates, his directorship of the ideologically powerful Bauhaus in the years after the First World War, and emigration to Britain and then the USA in the 1930s. He began his architectural studies in Munich in 1903, followed by a period in Berlin from 1905 to 1907. From 1908 to 1910 he worked in Peter Behrens's Berlin studio (where Mies Van Der Rohe and later Le Corbusier were also based for a while), after which he set up in business with Adolf Meyer, a partnership that lasted until 1925. An early influential building designed by Gropius and Meyer was the Fagus Factory (1911-14). Its clean lines and standardized elements influenced the form of his model factory building at the 1914 Deutscher Werkbund exhibition in Cologne, where he also exhibited a railway compartment. He had also been involved in the design of furniture and a diesel locomotive for the Königsberg locomotive factory. After the First World War he was a leading figure in the Arbeitsrat für Kunst (Workers' Council for Art), before being appointed as director of the Staatliches Bauhaus School in Weimar in 1919, effectively a merger of the former schools of fine and applied arts. This new institution brought together an exciting blend of teachers and students, embracing a wide range of avant-garde aesthetic ideas. His own response to such ideas could be seen in his designs for his office in 1923, especially the lamp which owed a debt to Gerrit Rietveld. However, the Bauhaus was often viewed with suspicion by municipal authorities and was consequently subject to considerable political challenge, a position which led to Gropius' resignation in 1928. Following a visit to the USA to study housing, he established his own practice, designing modular furniture and Adler automobiles. In 1929 he was made vice-president of the Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne. In the following year, with the help of Herbert Bayer, Marcel Breuer, and László Moholy-Nagy he organized the Werkbund exhibition at the Salon des Artistes Décorateurs in Paris. The theme of the exhibit was the design and furnishing of a ten-storey hotel, Gropius planning the steel-framed structure and communal spaces such as a gallery/library and a coffee bar. In the face of increasing political hostility to Modernist ideas and organizations such as the Deutscher Werkbund he left Germany for London in 1934, where he worked with the architect Maxwell Fry. Living in the Modernist Lawn Road Flats in Hampstead, London, designed by Wells Coates he also designed for the Isokon group, becoming its director in 1936. He emigrated to the USA in the following year, becoming the head of the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University until 1952. He also worked with Breuer from 1937 to 1944, founding a new practice, The Architects Collaborative (TAC), in 1946. Amongst his best-known designs of this period were two porcelain tea services in 1969 for Rosenthal, for whom he also designed two factories.

(1883–1969)

German-born naturalized American architect, best known for promoting International Modernism both as practitioner and educator. He worked with Behrens in Berlin (1907–10) before setting up his own practice. His earliest significant work (with A. Meyer) was the Fagus Factory, Alfeld-an-der-Leine (1911), a three-storeyed steel-framed structure with glass curtain-walls, one of the first buildings in which the beginnings of the International Modern style were displayed. For the Deutscher Werkbund Exhibition, Cologne (1914—again with Meyer), he designed the administrative building with curved glazed towers enclosing the staircases (an influential motif throughout the 1920s and 1930s), but otherwise the building had a stripped Neo-Classical simplicity, certain aspects of it were reminiscent of Wright's work, and its plan resembled the Ptolemaïc temple of Horus, Edfu, Egypt. Through van de Velde, Gropius was given the opportunity in 1915 to direct the Gross-herzoglich-Sächsische Kunstgewerbeschule (Grand-Ducal Saxon School of Arts and Crafts) at Weimar, but was prevented by the war from taking this up. In 1918 Gropius joined in the euphoria following the collapse of the monarchial system, and, with Taut, was active in promoting Modernist and left-wing ideas: he was involved in the Novembergruppe and Arbeitsrat für Kunst which combined efforts, out of which grew Die Gläserne Kette. Seeing the Weimar possibilities as a means by which he could promote Leftist ideology, he sought those who might be able to confirm the 1915 offer, and in 1919 became Director not only of the former Grand-Ducal Kunstgewerbeschule, but of the Hochschule für Bildende Kunst (High School for Fine Arts), which he amalgamated under the new title of Das Staatliche Bauhaus Weimar (the Weimar State House of Building). Influenced by the De Stijl movement and by his own belief in industrialization and mass-production, the Bauhaus moved inexorably away from a craft-oriented ethos to one of industrial design.

When the Bauhaus moved to Dessau, Gropius designed the buildings (completed in 1926) that became a paradigm for the International Modernist style. Even while at the Bauhaus, Gropius continued in practice with Meyer, designing the Sommerfeld House, Berlin-Dahlem (1921–2), made of teak from a scrapped warship, an Expressionist memorial at Weimar (1922), and the Jena State Theatre (1923). In 1927 he designed buildings for the Werkbund Housing Exhibition at Stuttgart, the Weissenhofsiedlung. He resigned as Bauhaus Director in 1928, and laid out the Siemensstadt Housing Estate, Berlin (1929–30), designing two of the apartment-blocks himself: with long strip-windows set in smooth rendered walls, they were widely imitated. As an active member of CIAM his proposals for high-rise housing in green areas were disseminated, and became part of Modernist orthodoxy. His own moderate left-wing views and the more overtly Communist political stance adopted by Hannes Meyer at the Bauhaus had repercussions, and even though he registered with the Nazi-created Reichskulturkammer (State Chamber of Culture) and designed a recreational and cultural centre (unrealized) for the Kraft durch Freude (Strength through Joy) Nazi movement (a project that invoked images of gigantic Party junketings worthy of a Nuremberg Rally), he failed to obtain major commissions.

In 1934 he settled in England where he lived in Lawn Road Flats, Hampstead, designed by Wells Coates, was involved in the MARS group, and worked with Maxwell Fry, designing the film laboratories at Denham, Bucks. (1936), Wood House, Shipbourne, Kent (1937), 66 Old Church Street, Chelsea (1935–6), and Impington Village College, Cambs. (1936), the lost his main contribution to architecture in England. He was also consultant (1934–5) to the Isokon Company, headed by Jack Pritchard (1899–1992), which had built the Hampstead flats to Coates's designs. In 1937, however, Gropius accepted the offer of a post at Harvard in the Graduate School of Design, and in 1938 became Chairman of the Department of Architecture there, at once expunging all Beaux-Arts traditions, an event followed at architectural schools throughout the USA. With Breuer he designed the Gropius House, Lincoln, Mass. (1937), the first monument of International Modernism in New England, which was followed by several more private houses, culminating in the Frank House, near Pittsburg, PA (1939). With Wachsmann, Gropius evolved systems for constructing prefabricated houses (1943–5).

After the 1939–45 war Gropius went into partnership with several younger architects, forming The Architects Collaborative (TAC), which produced the Graduate Center, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA (1949–50). For the Hansaviertel (Hansa Quarter), Berlin, Gropius designed an apartment-block (1957), and in the 1960s the new town of Britz-Buckow-Rudow, Berlin, was laid out to plans by him. He was probably the most influential architectural pedagogue of all time, but many aspects of his pronouncements and teachings were being questioned in the late C20 and early C21, as the environments created as a result of his influence have not proved to be either agreeable or functional.

Bibliography

• Argan (1975)
• Berdini (1994)
• Fitch (1960)
• Franciscono (1971)
• Gropius (1913, 1945, 1952, 1962, 1965, 1968)
• Gropius & Harkness (eds.) (1966)
• Herdeg (1985)
• F.Hesse (1964)
• Hüter (1976)
• Isaacs (1983–4)
• Kentgens-Craig (1999)
• Kentgens-Craig (1998)
• Lane (1985)
• O'Neal (ed.) (1966)
• Probst & Schädlich (1986–8)
• Sharp (1993)
• H.Weber (1961)
• Wingler (1969)

The full bibliography for this book is available to download as a pdf file.
Download the bibliography for A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (PDF: 1.2MB)

(väl'tər grō'pēʊs) , 1883–1969, German-American architect, one of the leaders of modern functional architecture. In Germany his Fagus factory buildings (1910–11) at Alfeld, with their glass walls, metal spandrels, and discerning use of purely industrial features, were among the most advanced works in Europe. After World War I, Gropius became (1918) director of the Weimar School of Art, reorganizing it as the Bauhaus. It was moved in 1925 to Dessau. The complete set of new buildings for it, which Gropius designed (1926), remains one of his finest achievements. He built the Staattheater at Jena (1923), some experimental houses at Stuttgart (1927), and designed residences, workers' dwellings, and industrial buildings. Driven out by the Nazis, he practiced (1934–37) in London with Maxwell Fry and in 1937 emigrated to America, where he headed the school of architecture at Harvard until 1952. His influence on the dissemination of functional architectural theory and the rise of the International style was immense. Practicing his principles of cooperative design, Gropius worked with a group of young architects on the design of the Harvard graduate center. He continued his architectural activity with this group, the Architects Collaborative (TAC), in such works as the U.S. embassy at Athens, the Univ. of Baghdad (1961), and the Grand Central City building, New York City (1963). His writings include The New Architecture and the Bauhaus (tr. 1935) and Scope of World Architecture (1955).

Bibliography

See studies by S. Giedion (1954), J. M. Fitch (1960), and M. Franciscono (1971).

(groh-pee-uhs)

A German-born twentieth-century architect who was a founder of the Bauhaus school. After 1937 he lived in the United States and taught at Harvard University, where he continued to advocate Bauhaus principles, particularly the use of functional materials and clean, geometric designs. His work greatly influenced modern architecture. (See functionalism.)

Quotes:

"A modern, harmonic and lively architecture is the visible sign of an authentic democracy."

"Architects, painters, and sculptors must recognize anew and learn to grasp the composite character of a building both as an entity and in its separate parts. Only then will their work be imbued with the architectonic spirit which it has lost as salon art. Together let us desire, conceive, and create the new structure of the future, which will embrace architecture and sculpture and painting in one unity and which will one day rise toward heaven from the hands of a million workers like the crystal symbol of a new faith."

"If your contribution has been vital there will always be somebody to pick up where you left off, and that will be your claim to immortality."

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