Walter Gropius

Walter Adolph Gropius (May 18, 1883 – July 5, 1969) was a German architect and founder of Bauhaus.

History

Born in Berlin, Walter Gropius was the third son of a building advisor to the government with the same name, and Manon Auguste Pauline Scharnweber (1855–1933) whose family owned a manor near the capital city.

Gropius married Alma Mahler, the widow of Gustav Mahler. Walter and Alma's daughter, named Manon after his mother, was born in 1916. When Manon died of polio at age eighteen, composer Alban Berg wrote his Violin Concerto in memory of her (it is inscribed "to the memory of an angel"). Gropius' marriage to Alma did not last. (Alma went on to marry again, to Franz Werfel).

Gropius, like his father and great-uncle Martin Gropius before him, was an architect. But all sources agree that Walter Gropius could not draw, and was dependent on collaborators and partner-interpreters all through his career. In school he hired an assistant to complete his homework for him. In 1908 Gropius found employment with the firm of Peter Behrens, one of the first members of the utilitarian school. His fellow employees at this time included Mies van der Rohe and Dietrich Marcks. In 1910 Gropius left the firm of Behrens and together with fellow employee Adolf Meyer established a practice in Berlin. Together they share credit for one of the seminal modernist buildings created during this period, the Faguswerk, Alfeld-an-der-Leine, Germany, a shoe last factory. The glass curtain walls of this building demonstrated both the modernist concern that form reflect function and Gropius's concern with providing healthful conditions for the working class. Other works of this early period include the office and factory building for the Werkbund Exhibition, Cologne, 1914.

Gropius's career was interrupted by the events of 1914. Called up immediately as a reservist, Gropius served as a sergeant major during the war years. Ironically the war provided an opportunity which would advance his career during the post war period. Henry van de Velde, the master of the Grand-Ducal Saxon School of Arts and Crafts in Weimer was asked to step down in 1915 due to his Belgian nationality. His recommendation of Gropius to succeed him led eventually to Gropius's appointment as master of the school in 1919. It was this academy which Gropius transformed into the world famous Bauhaus, attracting a faculty which included Paul Klee, Johannes Itten, Josef Albers, Herbet Bayer, László Moholy-Nagy, and Wassily Kandinsky. Students were taught to use modern and innovative materials and mass-produced fittings, often originally intended for industrial settings, to create original furniture and buildings.

In 1923, Gropius designed one of his most famous works, door handles, now considered an icon of 20th century design and often listed as one of the most influential designs to emerge from the Bauhaus.

Gropius fled Germany in 1934 due to the rising power of the Nazi Party, and lived and worked in Britain, at the Isokon project, and then, from 1937 to the United States, where his own house, the Gropius House in Lincoln, Massachusetts, was influential in bringing International Modernism to the US. Gropius did not like the term: "I made it a point to absorb into my own conception those features of the New England architectural tradition that I found still alive and adequate" (see ^*).

Gropius and his Bauhaus protégé Marcel Breuer both came to Cambridge, Massachusetts to teach at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and collaborate on the company-town Aluminum City Terrace project in New Kensington, Pennsylvania, before their professional split. In 1944, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States.

In 1945, Gropius founded The Architects' Collaborative (TAC) based in Cambridge with a group of younger architects. The original partners included Norman C. Fletcher, Jean B. Fletcher, John C. Harkness, Sarah P. Harkness, Robert S. MacMillan, Louis A. MacMillen, and Benjamin C. Thompson. TAC would become one of the most well-known and respected architectural firms in the world. TAC went bankrupt in 1995.

Gropius died in 1969 in Boston, Massachusetts, aged 86. Today, he is remembered not only by his various buildings but also by the district of Gropiusstadt in Berlin.

Important buildings

the Fagus Factory, 1910–1911, Alfeld an der Leine, Germany
the Bauhaus, 1925–1932, Dessau, Germany
the Gropius House, 1937, Lincoln, Massachusetts
the Aluminum City Terrace housing project, 1942–1944, New Kensington, Pennsylvania
the Harvard Graduate Center, 1949–1950, Cambridge, Massachusetts (The Architects' Collaborative) ^*
the University of Baghdad, 1957–1960
the John F. Kennedy Federal Building, 1963–1966
the Attleboro Junior High School, 1948
the Pan Am Building (now the Metlife Building), 1958–1963, New York, New York, with Pietro Belluschi and project architects Emery Roth & Sons
the Interbau Apartment blocks, 1957, Hansaviertel, Berlin, Germany, with The Architects' Collaborative and Wils Ebert
the award-winning Wayland High School, 1961
the Embassy of the United States, 1959–1961, Athens, Greece (The Architects' Collaborative and consulting architect Pericles Sakellarios)

Trivia

Gropius was known to have a snappy sense of style and was often seen wearing a bowtie. Among his students was the writer and theorist Sigfried Giedion.

Walter Gropius and his wife Alma are mentioned in Tom Lehrer's song "Alma."

Publications

The New Architecture and the Bauhaus, 1955.
The Scope of Total Architecture, 1956.

External links

Walter Gropius' house, Lincoln, Massachusetts
On the Interbau apartments
Impington Village College — only example of Gropius's work in the UK
Fagus works

Gourt Home::Gourt :: Walter Gropius

History

Important buildings

Trivia

Publications

External links