Walter Gropius
Early Life and Education
Walter Gropius was born on May 18, 1883, in Berlin, Germany, into a wealthy and cultured family. His father was a government architect, and his great-uncle, Martin Gropius, was a prominent architect and a student of the great 19th-century master Karl Friedrich Schinkel. This family background provided him with an early exposure to the world of architecture and design.
Gropius began his architectural studies in 1903 at the Technical University of Munich. He later continued his studies at the Technical University of Berlin, but he was not a conventional student. He was impatient with the traditional, academic curriculum and left the university in 1908 without completing his degree. He believed that a true architectural education could only be gained through practical experience.
In 1908, he joined the office of Peter Behrens, one of the most important and progressive architects and designers in Germany. The Behrens office was a hotbed of modernism, and it was here that Gropius worked alongside two other young men who would also go on to become giants of the 20th century: Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier.
Under Behrens, Gropius was involved in major projects such as the AEG Turbine Factory, a landmark of industrial architecture. He absorbed Behrens’s ideas about the need for a new, functional style that would be appropriate for the modern industrial age, and about the importance of collaboration between artists and industry.
In 1910, after three years with Behrens, Gropius established his own practice in Berlin with his colleague Adolf Meyer. Their first major commission was the Fagus Factory (1911) in Alfeld an der Leine, a shoe last factory that is one of the seminal works of modern architecture. The building’s revolutionary glass curtain wall, which wrapped around the corners of the building and made the structure appear to be weightless and transparent, was a radical departure from the heavy, solid forms of traditional factory design.
His promising career was interrupted by the outbreak of World War I. He served as an officer in the German army and was wounded several times. The war was a traumatic experience for him, and it reinforced his belief in the need for a new social and cultural order.
Architectural Philosophy and Career
Walter Gropius’s architectural philosophy was rooted in a deep belief in the social responsibility of the architect and the power of design to create a better society. He was a pioneer of modernism and a leading figure in the International Style, but his primary contribution was not as a designer of individual buildings, but as an educator, a theorist, and a collaborator.
His career is inextricably linked with the history of the Bauhaus, the most famous and influential school of art and design of the 20th century. In 1919, Gropius was appointed director of the Grand Ducal Saxon School of Arts and Crafts in Weimar. He merged it with the Weimar Academy of Fine Art and renamed it the “Staatliches Bauhaus,” or “State Building House.”
The Bauhaus was a revolutionary experiment in arts education. Its goal was to break down the traditional barriers between the fine arts and the applied arts, and to create a new unity of art and technology. The school’s curriculum was based on a “preliminary course” that taught the fundamental principles of design, followed by a series of workshops in different media, such as metalworking, weaving, and typography.
Gropius’s philosophy for the Bauhaus was summed up in his 1919 manifesto, which was published with a famous woodcut by Lyonel Feininger on its cover. He called for a “new guild of craftsmen, without the class distinctions which raise an arrogant barrier between craftsman and artist.” He envisioned a future where artists, architects, and craftsmen would work together to create the “new building of the future,” a total work of art, or “Gesamtkunstwerk.”
The Bauhaus moved from Weimar to Dessau in 1925, and Gropius designed a new campus for the school that was a masterpiece of the International Style. The Dessau Bauhaus building, with its clean lines, its glass curtain walls, and its clear separation of functions, was a physical embodiment of the school’s principles.
In 1928, Gropius resigned as director of the Bauhaus to return to private practice in Berlin. He focused on large-scale housing projects, which he saw as a way of using modern industrial techniques to solve the social problems of the day.
In 1934, with the rise of the Nazi regime, Gropius left Germany for England. He worked there for three years in partnership with the British architect Maxwell Fry. In 1937, he was invited to teach at the Harvard Graduate School of Design in the United States. He accepted the position and would remain at Harvard for the rest of his academic career.
At Harvard, he introduced the principles of the Bauhaus to a new generation of American architects, and he had a profound impact on architectural education in the United States. In 1945, he founded The Architects Collaborative (TAC), a firm that was based on the principle of teamwork and collaboration that he had championed at the Bauhaus.
Notable and Famous Works
While Walter Gropius is best known as an educator and a theorist, he also designed a number of important and influential buildings.
The Fagus Factory (1911) in Alfeld, Germany, which he designed with Adolf Meyer, is one of the most important early works of modern architecture. Its revolutionary use of a glass curtain wall had a profound influence on the development of the International Style.
The Bauhaus Building (1926) in Dessau, Germany, is his most famous work. The building is a complex of interconnected wings, each with its own distinct function: classrooms, workshops, dormitories, and an auditorium. The building’s asymmetrical plan, its use of reinforced concrete and glass, and its clean, unadorned surfaces made it a manifesto of modernist design.
The Gropius House (1938) in Lincoln, Massachusetts, was his own family home. It was one of the first examples of the International Style in the United States, and it was a powerful demonstration of the Bauhaus principles of simplicity, functionality, and the use of industrial materials. The house is now a museum.
The Pan Am Building (1963) in New York City (now the MetLife Building), which he designed with Pietro Belluschi and the firm of Emery Roth & Sons, was one of his most prominent and controversial late works. The massive, octagonal skyscraper, which sits astride Grand Central Terminal, was widely criticized for its scale and its impact on the urban environment.
The John F. Kennedy Federal Building (1966) in Boston, Massachusetts, is another of his major late works, designed with The Architects Collaborative. It is a large government office complex consisting of two 26-story towers and a low-rise connecting building.
Awards, Honors, and Legacy
Walter Gropius received numerous awards and honors for his work, including the Royal Gold Medal from the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1956 and the AIA Gold Medal in 1959.
His legacy is immense and far-reaching. He was one of the founding fathers of modernism, and his ideas have had a profound and lasting impact on the theory and practice of architecture and design.
His most important contribution was the Bauhaus. The school was only in operation for fourteen years, but its influence has been incalculable. It revolutionized arts education and created a new model for the integration of art, craft, and technology. The “Bauhaus style,” with its clean lines, its simple geometric forms, and its emphasis on functionalism, has become synonymous with modern design.
As an educator at Harvard, Gropius trained a generation of American architects, including Philip Johnson, I. M. Pei, and Paul Rudolph. He helped to make the International Style the dominant force in American architecture in the mid-20th century.
While his own architectural work has sometimes been overshadowed by that of his more famous contemporaries, such as Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe, his contribution as a thinker, a teacher, and a collaborator is undisputed. He was a visionary who believed in the power of design to create a more rational, more beautiful, and more just society, and his work continues to inspire architects and designers around the world. Walter Gropius died on July 5, 1969.