WALTER GROPIUS

Presented by
Name

The father of the Bauhaus

(18 May 1883 5 July 1969)

Walter Gropius was the founder of the Bauhaus and remained committed to the
institution that he invested in throughout his life. He was a Bauhaus impresario in the
best possible sense, a combination of speaker and entrepreneur, a visionary manager
who aimed to make art a social concern during the post-war upheaval. After his
departure as the Bauhauss director, Gropius recommended his two successors: Hannes
Meyer and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. The conservation of the Bauhauss legacy after
its forced closure is another of Gropiuss accomplishments. He was also able to continue
his career in exile in America as an avant-garde architect.

A native of Berlin, Gropius came from an upper middle-class background. His greatuncle was the architect Martin Gropius, a student of Karl Friedrich Schinkel, whose
best-known work was the Knigliche Kunstgewerbemuseum (royal museum of applied
art) in Berlin, which now bears his name. In 1908, after studying architecture in Munich
and Berlin for four semesters, Gropius joined the office of the renowned architect and
industrial designer Peter Behrens, who worked as a creative consultant for AEG. Other
members of Behrens's practice included Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier.
Gropius became a member of the Deutscher Werkbund (German Work Federation) as
early as 1910.
The same year, Gropius opened his own company. He designed furniture, wallpapers,
objects for mass production, automobile bodies and even a diesel locomotive. In 1911,
Gropius worked with Adolf Meyer on the design of the Fagus-Werk, a factory in the
Lower Saxony town of Alfeld an der Leine. With its clear cubic form and transparent
faade of steel and glass, this factory building is perceived to be a pioneering work of
what later became known as modern architecture. For the 1914 exhibition of the
Deutscher Werkbund (German Work Federation) in Cologne, Gropius and Adolf Meyer
designed a prototype factory which was to become yet another classic example of
modern architecture.

Selection of works
Fagus-Werk Factory, Alfeld an der Leine, The History of the
Bauhaus
Manifesto and Programme of the Staatliche Bauhaus, 1919
Sommerfeld House, Berlin, 1921
Bauhaus Prints, 1921
Monument to the March Dead, Weimar, 1922
Chicago Tribune Tower, Berlin, 1922
Diagram for the structure of teaching at the Bauhaus, 1922
Bauhaus Books, 1925
Bauhaus Building Dessau, Berlin, 1926
Masters Houses, Dessau, 1926
Dessau-Trten Housing Estate, Dessau, 1928
Employment Office, 1929

Monument to the March Dead

In 1920, Walter Gropius submitted his lightning strike as

symbol of the living spirit for a competition tendered by
the Stdtisches Museum Weimar. The Denkmal der
Mrzgefallenen (Monument to the March Dead) was
designed to commemorate the victims of the Kapp Putsch
of March 1920. Two years later, Gropiuss monument was
erected in the main cemetery in Weimar.

Bauhaus Books

From 1925 to 1930, Gropius and Moholy-Nagy were responsible

for the publication of 14 Bauhaus books. Supported in the
practical aspects of publishing by Lucia Moholy, the aim of the
project was to depict the challenges and accomplishments of the
Bauhaus. In addition, monographic texts by both German and
international authors were to awaken an understanding for the
diverse currents of the avant-garde movement.

Fagus-Werk Factory
With the commission to design the faade of Carl
Benscheidts factory building, the Fagus-Werk, Walter
Gropius was able to establish himself as an
independent architect. Walter Gropius and Adolf
Meyer, both of whom were once employed in Peter
Behrenss office, turned the shoe last factory in Alfeld
an der Leine into an early masterpiece of modern
architectural history. The two architects continued to
supervise the expansion of the Fagus-Werk until
1925. Its fascination owes a great deal to the light and
airy quality of the main building. This was primarily
achieved by foregoing supporting corner pillars,
achieved by relying on an elaborate support structure
and by windows that extend from floor to ceiling.

Sommerfeld House
Sommerfeld House was the first commission Walter
Gropius received (in 1920) as the director of his new
school. It was built in Berlin-Dahlem by the building
contractor Adolf Sommerfeld. The expressionistic
wooden house was also the Bauhauss first collective
project. The windows and the interior fittings and
fixtures were made by students such as Josef Albers,
Marcel Breuer and Joost Schmidt.

Bauhaus Building Dessau

After the closure of the Bauhaus in Weimar,
the city of Dessau offered to construct a new
building for the Bauhaus school. The building
was inaugurated in 1926. The three functional
areas of workshop, administration and school
are clearly divided into individual structural
bodies. Each part of the building is
underpinned by a skeleton of reinforced steel.
With this building, Gropius created a landmark
of New Architecture.

Chicago Tribune Tower

Within the scope of an international
competition hosted by the
newspaper Chicago Tribune in 1922,
which invited designs for new office
buildings, Walter Gropius and Adolf
Meyer submitted their much admired
yet unrealised design for an
exceptionally modern glass and
metal high-rise, which transcended
all historic forms of architecture.

Masters Houses

The photographs taken by Lucia Moholy of the ensemble of

Masters Houses in Dessau still influence our image of the
Bauhaus and modern architecture to this day. The single
directors house, which was destroyed during the war, and the
three double houses for the Bauhaus masters were designed
by Walter Gropius and built by his architecture office on an
elongated plot with a stock of pine trees. The outer shape of
the buildings, the organisation of their rooms according to
their usage and light sources, as well as their interior
furnishing with built-in closets and shelves, correspond with
the principles of functional building and represent a further
development of Gropiuss idea of a large-scale building set.
The double houses consist of reflections of their respective
halves on the same floor plan rotated by 90, which makes
their visual impact highly heterogeneous. To provide
structuring for the main buildings, the projecting building
elements and/or window embrasures were framed in colour.
The unified overall image of the complex, which was realised
according to the requirements of its future inhabitants,
contradicts the colourful designs of the interior spaces. These
resulted from the individual preferences of the masters and
are still seen as evidence of their different characters.

LUDWIG MIES VAN DER ROHE

The leading German avant-garde architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was the third and last Bauhaus
director. Appointed by the founding director of the school, Walter Gropius, he replaced the previous
director Hannes Meyer, who was dismissed for political reasons in 1930. Both the school and the city of
Dessau had hoped that Mies van der Rohes authority would have a calming influence on the schools
radicalised student body. However, because of the balance of power in Dessau, which was dominated
by the National Socialists, even Mies van der Rohe was unable to maintain the schools location. He
attempted to continue the schools teaching activities in Berlin until its enforced closure in 1932.
Like Walter Gropius before him, who was the dominant German avant-garde architect when appointed
as the founding director of the Bauhaus in 1919, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was the leading architect in
Germany when he became the third director of the Bauhaus in 1930. A year earlier, his architectural
designs for the spectacular Barcelona Pavilion successfully represented the achievements of the
Weimar Republic at the World Exhibition in the Spanish metropolis. He did not need the school in order
to make a name for himself or to win commissions. Instead, Mies van der Rohe took on his first
academic teaching post at the Bauhaus. He had been recommended, just like his predecessor Hannes
Meyer, by Walter Gropius, who had retired from his directorial post in 1928. After Meyers dismissal by
the city of Dessau, which Gropius had backed to prevent further Communist radicalisation among the
Bauhauss students, the members of the Bauhaus masters council and Dessaus municipal council
believed that a person of Mies van der Rohes authority would have a stabilising effect on the school.

Synopsis
Born in Germany in 1886, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe broke new
ground with his architectural designs. He started out as a draftsman
before striking out later on his own. During World War I, Mies served in
the German military. He then became a well-known architect in
Germany, creating such structures as the German Pavilion for the
1929 Barcelona Exposition. In the late 1930s, Mies emigrated to the
United States. There he created such well-known Modernist works as
the Lake Shore Drive Apartments and the Seagram Building. He died
in 1969.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona Pavilion, 1929. Image from the Knoll Archive.

In 1912, Mies established his own office in Berlin. Through furniture,

residential projects and extraordinary, yet unrealized concepts for
skyscrapers, he gained recognition as a leader of the German
modern movement. As such, he was selected to design the German
Pavilion at the Barcelona Industrial Exposition of 1929. His design,
a rhythmic arrangement of horizontal and vertical planes of glass,
stone and metal was an experiment in free flowing space. With no
discernible distinction between rooms or inside and outside, the
design fundamentally challenged the architectural boxes within a
box standard of the time. Inside, Mies included the Barcelona Chair
and Ottoman, designed to offer the King and Queen of Spain to a
place to rest (they in fact never sat down). The Barcelona Pavilion
and the chairs it contained are universally recognized as milestones
of modern design.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona Collection in Philip Johnson's

Glass House in New Canaan. Image from the Knoll Archive.

Mies served as Vice President of the Deutsher Werkbund and

Director of the Bauhaus from 1930 until it closed in 1933. He
immigrated to the United States in 1938 to become the director of
architecture at the Armour Institute (later the Illinois Institute of
Technology). From his Chicago-based practice, Mies designed a
portfolio of buildings that changed the face of American institutional
architecture the most notable examples being the IIT campus
and the Seagram Building in New York. While at IIT he befriended
and mentored a young Florence Knoll. Florence has always
credited Mies as her most influential instructor, and, in 1948, Mies
granted Knoll exclusive rights to produce his furniture, including the
Barcelona collection, the Brno chair, and MR series.

The production of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona Chair. Image from
the Knoll Archive.

Wabe (Honeycomb)
The 1922 project design for a triangular twentystorey office building in the shape of a glazed
crystal honeycomb (Wabe) was Ludwig Mies van
der Rohes spectacular contribution to a high-profile
competition inviting ideas for Berlins first high-rise
at Friedrichstrae railway station. However, even at
this early stage, the design was excluded from the
official presentation.

Weissenhof Estate
In 1925, the Deutscher Werkbund (German Work
Federation) commissioned Ludwig Mies van der
Rohe to organise the exhibition "Die Wohnung" (the
flat). The show, opened in 1927, was organised into
four sections with the Weienhof Estate being the
most significant field of experimentation for new
materials and construction methods. In this
prototype housing estate, 17 European architects,
among them Le Corbusier, Jacobus Oud, Hans
Scharoun, Walter Gropius, Mart Stam and Peter
Behrens, built 21 buildings with a total of 60 flats.
Mies participated with a four-storey residential block
of four row houses. In the 12 rental units, which
Mies had arranged and furnished by 29 interior
designers, he realised the concept of a flexible floor
plan for the first time, facilitated by the use of
moveable dividing walls in a skeleton construction.

Barcelona Pavilion

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe designed the pavilion on

behalf of the German Government for the 1929
World Exhibition in Barcelona. It was designed in
collaboration with Lilly Reich, who was the creative
director of the German building section. On a
specially selected parcel of land, Mies fulfilled an
only vaguely formulated architectural assignment by
constructing a flat-roofed representational building
with a free floor plan, that is, flexible spaces with
flowing transitions from one room to the next. The
use of the finest materials such as onyx dor, green
marble and travertine, combined with large glass
faades that floated in a steel skeleton construction,
gave the pavilion its transparency and spaciousness.
The buildings specially designed furniture was
probably created by virtue of a close exchange with
Lilly Reich, who quite probably advised Mies with
respect to the colour concept and the choice of
materials.

Lange House

Lange House, which was designed as an

ensemble together with Esters House, shows
characteristics of both traditional architecture and
avant-garde ambitions. Its brick faades are a
reference to the crafts Mies was a trained mason
, while the fact that the external walls of the cubic
structure have been divested of their supportive
function through the use of a skeleton structure
highlights Miess interest in progressive building
concepts. It was only the supporting steel structure
that facilitated the incorporation in the faade of
large windows (some of which can be lowered
completely) and the flowing transition between the
interior and exterior space, especially on the
garden side of the house. The initial design for the
house, which foresaw an open-plan interior (but
which was rejected by the clients), would not have
been possible using the traditional methods of
construction.

Tugendhat House

In Tugendhat House, which was commissioned

by Grete and Fritz Tugendhat, Mies van der
Rohe incorporates, among other things, design
elements from the Barcelona Pavilion. The steel
skeleton construction, large windows, flowing
transitions between the rooms on the ground
floor and the use of the finest raw materials to
divide up the space are familiar components. In
addition, Mies laid great store by implementing
the latest developments in the field of modern
living. An efficient heating/air-conditioning
system, the window sections that could be
lowered completely allowing a seamless link
between the interior and the terrace or garden,
as well as the ingenious organisation of the
space on the upper floor (where the private
rooms of the Tugendhat family were housed)
and the souterrain utility rooms are all tailored to
meet the needs of an upper-class family.

Barcelona Chair
LUDWIG MIES VAN DER ROHE CA.1929
One of the most recognized objects of the last
century, and an icon of the modern
movement, the Barcelona Chair is a tribute to
the marriage of design and craftsmanship.
*Scroll to "details" for more information on
available leathers.
Retail price of current configuration:
$5592

Barcelona Couch
LUDWIG MIES VAN DER ROHE 1930
Designed in 1930, the Barcelona Couch
shares the same simple elegance as the
iconic lounge chair of the same name.
Mies van der Rohe's command of line and
material in all medium, from architecture to
furniture, helped define the modern
vocabulary.

Retail price of current configuration:

$10528

Brno Chair - Flat Bar

LUDWIG MIES VAN DER ROHE CA.1930
Designed by Mies for his renowned
Tugendhat House in Brno, Czech
Republic, this chair - with its lean profile,
clean lines and meticulous attention to
detail - reflects the groundbreaking
simplicity of its original environment.
?*Scroll to "details" for more information
on available textiles.
Retail price of current configuration:
$1977

Barcelona Stool
LUDWIG MIES VAN DER ROHE CA.1929
Whether placed in front of a Barcelona Chair, or
standing alone, the Barcelona Stool exudes a
simple elegance that epitomizes Mies van der
Rohe's most famous maxim - "less is more".
*Scroll to "details" for more information on
available textiles.
Retail price of current configuration:
$2644