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HISTORY HE WAS THE THIRD CHILD OF WALTERADOLPH GROPIUS AND MANON AUGUSTE

PAULINE .

HE WAS BORN IN BERLIN 1879-1964

GROUPIUS MARRIED ALMA MAHLER 1879-

1964

HAD A DAUGHTER NAMED GUSTAV MAHLER

WHO DIED BECAUSE OF POLIO AT THE AGEOF 18

IN 1923 GROPIUS MARRIED ISE FRANK

GROPIUS WAS ALSO KNOWN AS ATI

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EARLIER CAREER

Gropius could not draw, and was dependent oncollaborators 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 LudwigMies 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.

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Although Gropius and Meyer only designed thefacade, the glass curtain walls of this buildingdemonstrated both the modernist principle that form

reflects function and Gropius's concern with providinghealthful conditions for the working class. Otherworks of this early period include the office andfactory building for the Werkbund Exhibition(1914) in Cologne.

In 1913, Gropius published an article about "TheDevelopment of Industrial Buildings," which includedabout a dozen photographs of factories and grainelevators in North America. A very influential text, thisarticle had a strong influence on other Europeanmodernists, including Le Corbusier and Erich

Mendelsohn, both of whom reprinted Gropius's grainelevator pictures between 1920 and 1930.

Gropius's career was interrupted by the outbreakof World War I in 1914. Called up immediately as areservist, Gropius served as a sergeant major at

the Western front during the war years, and waswounded and almost killed.

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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 constructionstood for

"School of Building", while it hasnow come to mean "building

supplies superstore".

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MAJOR ACHIEVEMENTBAUHAUS HOUSE

The Bauhaus schoolwas founded by WalterGropius in Weimar. Inspite of its name, andthe fact that its founder

was an architect, theBauhaus did not havean architecturedepartment during thefirst years of itsexistence.

The Bauhaus stylebecame one of the mostinfluential currentsin Modernistarchitecture and

modern design.

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The Bauhaus hada profound

influence uponsubsequentdevelopments inart, architecture, graphicdesign, interior

design, industrialdesign,and typography.

The school existed inthree German cities ,

under three differentarchitect-directors: WalterGropius , HannesMeyer and LudwigMies van der Rohe,

the school wasclosed by its own

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STYLE

He wanted to create a new architectural style toreflect 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

calledBauhausand a series of books called

"Bauhausbcher"

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The changes of venue andleadership resulted in aconstant shifting of focus,technique, instructors, andpolitics.

For instance: the pottery

shop was discontinuedwhen the school movedfrom Weimar to Dessau,even though it had been animportant revenue source;when Mies van der Rohetook over the school in1930, he transformed it intoa private school, and wouldnot allow any supportersof Hannes Meyer to attendit.

Directors room was the

major achievement

DIRECTORS

ROOM

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ARCHITECTURAL OUTPUT The paradox of the earlyBauhaus was that, although

its manifesto proclaimed thatthe ultimate aim of allcreative activity was building,the school did not offerclasses in architecture until1927.

The single most profitabletangible product of theBauhaus was its wallpaper.

The definitive 1926 Bauhausbuilding in Dessau is alsoattributed to Gropius. Apartfrom contributions to the1923

Theater of bahaus was oneof the major achievement

THEATER PROJECT

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In the next two yearsunder Meyer, thearchitectural focus shifted

away from aesthetics andtowards functionality.There were majorcommissions: one fromthe city of Dessau for fivetightly designed

"Laubenganghuser"(apartment buildings withbalcony access), whichare still in use today, andanother for theheadquarters of the

Federal School ofthe German TradeUnions (ADGB)in Bernau bei Berlin.Meyer's approach was toresearch users' needs

and scientifically developthe desi n solution.

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The popular conception of the

Bauhaus as the source of

extensive Weimar-era working

housing is not accurate. Twoprojects, 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 BrunoTaut, Hans Poelzig and

particularly Ernst May, as the city

architects

ofBerlin, Dresden and Frankfurt res

pectively, who are rightfully

credited with the thousands ofsocially progressive housing units

built in Weimar Germany. In Taut's

case, the housing he built in south-

west Berlin during the 1920s, is still

occupied, and can be reached by

going easily from the U-Bahn

stop Onkel Toms Htte

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Siemensstadt, 1928,Berlin, (Gropius)

Some degree of formaldifferentiation (overallplan by Hans Scharoun)

General divide inGermany of the period

(marked by Behne):functionalists versusrationalists

The former come fromExpressionismuniquebuildings; the latter derive

solutions applicable tovarious cases

Examples often straddleboth to various degrees

(Hans Scharoun,Schminke House, 1933,

OTHER WORK

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FAGUS FACTORY , Gropius and his partner Meyer

were under great pressure tokeep up to the rhythm of work.Construction started in May 1911based on Werners plans andBenscheidt wanted the factory tobe running by winter of the same

year. This was achieved in greatpart and in 1912 Gropius andMeyer were designing theinteriors of the main building andsecondary smaller buildings onthe site.

He opposed Mathesius (typifying)for his legislative, totalising,bureaucratic approach

Artistic conceptualisation should befree and original and not controlledby the state bureaucracy and the bigbusiness

Like Behrens: nature andtechnology can be transfigured by

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FAGUS FACTORYShows the differences in approach

between Behrens and Gropius

Different programmemodest,provincial factorywhich allowedfor a different agenda: modesty, lackof symbolic charge, no grandsymbolic claims (as was the case

with AEG) It becomes prophetic of the

objective Modern Movement of the1920s

Projecting bay windows andrecessed, tilted masonry, similar to

AEG, but:

The tilt is pragmatic; the brick piersare attempting to disappear (anti-monumental, anti-symbolic); thefacade appears made of glass;instead of buttresses, void corners,no impressionistic rounding

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MARCH DEAD

In 1919, Gropius wasinvolved in the Glass

Chainutopian expressio

nistcorrespondence

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

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_Chainhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_Chainhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expressionist_architecturehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expressionist_architecturehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expressionist_architecturehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expressionist_architecturehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_Chainhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_Chain

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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 respectedarchitectural 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.

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THANK YOU