WALTER

GROPIUS
MASTER OF MODERN
ARCHITECTURE

HISTORY
HE WAS THE THIRD CHILD OF WALTER

ADOLPH GROPIUS AND MANON AUGUSTE

PAULINE .
HE WAS BORN IN BERLIN 1879-1964
GROUPIUS MARRIED ALMA MAHLER 18791964
HAD A DAUGHTER NAMED GUSTAV MAHLER
WHO DIED BECAUSE OF POLIO AT THE AGE
OF 18
IN 1923 GROPIUS MARRIED ISE FRANK
GROPIUS WAS ALSO KNOWN AS ATI

EARLIER CAREER
Gropius could not draw, and was dependent on

collaborators and partner-interpreters throughout 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 Ludwig
Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, and Dietrich
Marcks.
In 1910 Gropius left the firm of Behrens and
together with fellow employee Adolf
Meyer established a practice in Berlin.

 Although Gropius and Meyer only designed the

facade, the glass curtain walls of this building

demonstrated both the modernist principle that form
reflects 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
(1914) in Cologne.
In 1913, Gropius published an article about "The
Development of Industrial Buildings," which included
about a dozen photographs of factories and grain
elevators in North America. A very influential text, this
article had a strong influence on other European
modernists, including Le Corbusier and Erich
Mendelsohn, both of whom reprinted Gropius's grain
elevator pictures between 1920 and 1930.
Gropius's career was interrupted by the outbreak
of World War I in 1914. Called up immediately as a
reservist, Gropius served as a sergeant major at
the Western front during the war years, and was
wounded and almost killed.

WALTER GROPIUS

Walter Gropius, Hannes Meyer

and Ludwig Mies van der

Staatliches Bauhaus (commonly

as Bauhaus, was a school
in Germany that combined crafts
and the fine arts, and was famous
for the approach to design that it
publicized and taught. It operated
from 1919 to 1933.

At that time
the German term Bauhaus, literally
"house of construction stood for
"School of Building", while it has
now come to mean "building
supplies superstore".

MAJOR ACHIEVEMENT
BAUHAUS HOUSE
The Bauhaus school

was founded by Walter

Gropius in Weimar. In
spite of its name, and
the fact that its founder
was an architect, the
Bauhaus did not have
an architecture
department during the
first years of its
existence.
The Bauhaus style
became one of the most
influential currents
in Modernist
architecture and
modern design.

 The Bauhaus had

a profound
influence upon
subsequent
developments in
art, architecture, gr
aphic
design, interior
design, industrial
design,
and typography.
The school existed in

three German cities ,

under three different
architectdirectors: Walter
Gropius , Hannes
Meyer and Ludwig
Mies van der Rohe,
the school was
closed by its own

STYLE
He wanted to create a new architectural style to

reflect this new era.

His style in architecture and consumer goods was
to be functional, cheap and consistent with mass
production.
To these ends, Gropius wanted to reunite art and
craft to arrive at high-end functional products with
artistic pretensions.
The Bauhaus issued a magazine
calledBauhaus and a series of books called
"Bauhausbcher"

 The changes of venue and

leadership resulted in a
constant shifting of focus,
technique, instructors, and
politics.
For instance: the pottery
shop was discontinued
when the school moved
from Weimar to Dessau,
even though it had been an
important revenue source;
when Mies van der Rohe
took over the school in
1930, he transformed it into
a private school, and would
not allow any supporters
of Hannes Meyer to attend
it.
Directors room was the
major achievement

DIRECTORS
ROOM

ARCHITECTURAL OUTPUT
The paradox of the early

Bauhaus was that, although

its manifesto proclaimed that
the ultimate aim of all
creative activity was building,
the school did not offer
classes in architecture until
1927.
The single most profitable
tangible product of the
Bauhaus was its wallpaper.
The definitive 1926 Bauhaus
building in Dessau is also
attributed to Gropius. Apart
from contributions to the
1923
Theater of bahaus was one
of the major achievement
THEATER PROJECT

 In the next two years

under Meyer, the

architectural focus shifted
away from aesthetics and
towards functionality.
There were major
commissions: one from
the city of Dessau for five
tightly designed
"Laubenganghuser"
(apartment buildings with
balcony access), which
are still in use today, and
another for the
headquarters of the
Federal School of
the German Trade
Unions (ADGB)
in Bernau bei Berlin.
Meyer's approach was to
research users' needs
and scientifically develop
the design solution.

The popular conception of the

Bauhaus as the source of
extensive Weimar-era working
housing is not accurate. Two
projects, the apartment building
project in Dessau and the Trten
row housing also in Dessau, fall in
that category, but developing
worker housing was not the first
priority of Gropius nor Mies. It was
the Bauhaus contemporaries Bruno
Taut, Hans Poelzig and
particularly Ernst May, as the city
architects
ofBerlin, Dresden and Frankfurt res
pectively, who are rightfully
credited with the thousands of
socially progressive housing units
built in Weimar Germany. In Taut's
case, the housing he built in southwest Berlin during the 1920s, is still
occupied, and can be reached by
going easily from the U-Bahn
stop Onkel Toms Htte

OTHER WORK
Siemensstadt, 1928,

Berlin, (Gropius)
Some degree of formal
differentiation (overall
plan by Hans Scharoun)
General divide in
Germany of the period
(marked by Behne):
functionalists versus
rationalists
The former come from
Expressionism unique
buildings; the latter derive
solutions applicable to
various cases
Examples often straddle
both to various degrees
(Hans Scharoun,
Schminke House, 1933,

FAGUS FACTORY
, Gropius and his partner Meyer

were under great pressure to

keep up to the rhythm of work.
Construction started in May 1911
based on Werners plans and
Benscheidt wanted the factory to
be running by winter of the same
year. This was achieved in great
part and in 1912 Gropius and
Meyer were designing the
interiors of the main building and
secondary smaller buildings on
the site.
He opposed Mathesius (typifying)
for his legislative, totalising,
bureaucratic approach
Artistic conceptualisation should be
free and original and not controlled
by the state bureaucracy and the big
business
Like Behrens: nature and
technology can be transfigured by

FAGUS FACTORY
Shows the differences in approach
between Behrens and Gropius
Different programme modest,
provincial factory which allowed
for a different agenda: modesty, lack
of symbolic charge, no grand
symbolic claims (as was the case
with AEG)
It becomes prophetic of the
objective Modern Movement of the
1920s
Projecting bay windows and
recessed, tilted masonry, similar to
AEG, but:
The tilt is pragmatic; the brick piers
are attempting to disappear (antimonumental, anti-symbolic); the
facade appears made of glass;
instead of buttresses, void corners,
no impressionistic rounding

MARCH DEAD
In 1919, Gropius was

involved in the Glass

Chain utopian expressio
nist correspondence
under the pseudonym
"Mass." Usually more
notable for his
functionalist approach,
the "Monument to the
March Dead," designed
in 1919 and executed in
1920, indicates that
expressionism was an
influence on him at that

ACHIEVEMENTS
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, andBenjamin 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.
In the early 1990s, a series of books entitled The Walter Gropius
Archive was published covering his entire architectural career.

THANK YOU