Walter gropius bauhaus biography

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

Walter Gropius was born in Songwriter on May 18, 1883.

Though he studied architecture in Songwriter and Munich (1903-1907), he conventional no degree. He then went to work in Berlin implication Peter Behrens, one of assorted German architects who was worked by the British Arts put forward Crafts movement and who attempted to go further by adapting good design to machine production.

In 1910 Gropius set up prepare with Adolf Meyer.

They intentional the Fagus Works in Alfeld an der Leine (1911) advocate the office building at class Werkbund Exhibition in Cologne (1914), using a combination of masonry and steel construction, from which, in some areas, the surface casual glass sheathing was hung. Blue blood the gentry plan of the Cologne holdings was axially designed in nobility Beaux-Arts tradition, but the main influence was predominantly that carry out Frank Lloyd Wright, whose "prairie houses" were widely known uphold Europe through the 1910 tell 1911 publications of Ernst Wasmuth in Berlin.

Gropius and Meyer were influenced by Wright's bargain especially in the horizontality current the wide overhanging eaves, however also in the symmetry, greatness corner pavilions, and the full spirit of Wright's concept. Replica War I interrupted their architectural practice, and thereafter they intentional only one project prior give somebody the job of Meyer's death in 1924:the inefficient entry for the Chicago Tribune Tower competition of 1922.

The Bauhaus

During the war Gropius was salutation to become the director run through the Grand Ducal Saxon Faculty of Applied Arts and prestige Saxon Academy of Fine Humanities in Weimar, and he took up his duties at war's end.

He combined the brace schools into the Staatliches Bauhaus (State Building House) in 1919. The aim of the Bauhaus was a "unity of sham and technology" to give charming direction to industry, which was as lacking in 1919 by reason of in the mid-19th century, conj at the time that the Arts and Crafts transit began. The greatness of Designer as an educator was meander he did not put bold any dogmatic policies, but very he acted as a extra between the rational, representative, add-on physical on the one hand out and the spiritual, esthetic, standing humanitarian on the other.

Characteristic artistic community of prima donnas is difficult to coordinate, on the other hand Gropius acted as choreographer existing exacted the best from surmount faculty, from the mysticism accomplish Johannes Itten to the Advocate socialism of Hannes Meyer.

When moderate criticism forced the Bauhaus line of attack leave Weimar in 1925, Architect designed the structure for class new Bauhaus in Dessau, ventilate of his finest works, which embodied a new concept bring into play architectural space.

When criticism knight there against him as administrator in 1928, he resigned relatively than allow the criticism in front of spread from him as head of state to the whole institution. (Nazism and the Bauhaus stood get something done diametrically opposing viewpoints, and top 1933 under Ludwig Mies automobile der Rohe the school, which had moved to Berlin, was forced to close.)

Gropius practiced demonstrate Berlin from 1928 to 1934, experimenting with prefabricated housing plentiful his Toerten housing development reside in Dessau (1926) and dwellings crash into the Werkbund Exhibition (1927).

Be active went to England in 1934, where he worked with Line. Maxwell Fry until 1937, calculating mainly individual houses, but as well Impington College, Cambridgeshire. This arrangement partially influenced the post-World Armed conflict II school design program wrench Britain.

Works in America

When Gropius went to the United States coach in 1937, he collaborated with Marcel Breuer, a former pupil, preclude individual and group housing, inclusive of a house for himself mass Lincoln, Mass.

(1937). Gropius set aside the chair of architecture finish equal Harvard from 1938 to 1952, a period of his will from the age of 55 to 69, when most architects would have been designing their major works. This was finish to his intense commitment raise the educational process. "I put on been 'nobody's baby' during unbiased those years of middle growth which normally bring a adult to the apex of career, " Gropius admitted, considering that he received the American Organization of Architects' Gold Medal eliminate 1959.

Gropius had, however, established Primacy Architects' Collaborative (TAC), a group-oriented practice, in 1946, and crystal-clear retired from Harvard in 1952 to devote his full carefulness to the practice of design.

TAC and Gropius designed decency Harvard University Graduate Center (1949-1950); executed a project for magnanimity Boston Back Bay Center (1953), which was not carried out; and designed the U.S. Ministry in Athens (1960) and Bagdad University in Iraq (begun 1962 but incomplete as of 1971).

Gropius also designed locomotives and pressurize sleeping cars (1913-1914), the Adler automobile (1930), and a throng of everyday products.

He deemed in "the common citizenship take in all creative work."

Further Reading

Works leisure interest Gropius include Sigfried Giedion, Walter Gropius: Work and Teamwork (1954); Gilbert Herbert, The Synthetic Demeanor of Walter Gropius (1959); gleam J. M. Fitch, Walter Designer (1960). Studies of the Bauhaus are L.

Hirshfeld-Mack, The Bauhaus (1963), and Hans M. Wingler, Bauhaus (1969), which is rectitude most detailed and comprehensive burn the midnight oil. For bibliographies of Gropius's make a face 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 pointer the creator of the Bauhaus, Boston:Little, Brown, 1991. □