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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_Chain8/10/2019 ppt on works of walter gropius and his buildings
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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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