Walter Gropius, like his father and his great-uncle Martin Gropius before him,

became an architect. He is regarded as one of the pioneering master of

modern architecture. Grand-Ducal Saxon School of Arts and Crafts in Weimar,

It was this academy which Gropius transformed into the world famous

Bauhaus(1919-1932). With the help of the English architect Maxwell Fry,

Gropius was able to leave Nazi Germany in 1934, on the pretext of making a

temporary visit to Britain. He lived and worked in Britain, as part of the Isokon

group with Fry and others and then, in 1937, moved on to the United States.

The house he built for himself in Lincoln, Massachusetts, (now known as

Gropius House) was influential in bringing International Modernism to the U.S.

but Gropius disliked the term: "I made it a point to absorb into my own

conception those features of the New England architectural tradition that I

found still alive and adequate. In 1944, he became a naturalized citizen of the

United States. 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 O

Harkness, Robert S. MacMillan, Louis A. MacMillen, and Benjamin C. Thompson

Born

Walter Adolph Georg Gropius

May 18, 1883

Berlin, German Empire

Died July 5, 1969 (aged 86)

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Nationality German/American

Awards AIA Gold Medal (1959)

Goethe Prize (1961)

Practice

Peter Behrens (1908–1910)

The Architects' Collaborative (1945–

1969)

Field walter Gropius worked

Bauhaus: Established in Weimar in the year 1919

as an art, design and architecture school. The goal of

Bauhaus was to bring together art, handcrafts and

architecture into one single synthesis of the arts. This guideline is rather

strongly oriented on the arts and crafts movement – however, Bauhaus

opened itself for new technological possibilities, so that the way to industrial

design was smoothed

Cubism: . Cubism dissipated representation by using simple

geometrisurfaces, above all cubes. By use of this process, forms became split

up, so that cubism created a first form of abstraction. An important impulse for

cubism was the art of Paul Cézanne as well as his programmatic statement,

"everything in art is formed of balls, cones and cylinders".

Futurism: Similar to Cubism, Futurism was preoccupied with the

decomposition of form. Futurist images seek to visualize a series of motions,

using chronophotography, or multiple photographic exposures . Futurist artists

developed a rapid, vibrant style that dismantled perspective and delineation so

that color and shape could be expressed. Futurist sculpture tried to capture

the motion and speed of the world of technology in a single object; figures are

fragmented, as in Boccioni’s work, "Unique Forms of Continuity in Space".

Historicism : Historicism, in the broadest sense, means the

recourse to historical style, which was also utilized during the Renaissance

Constructivism: . It concentrated on strictly geometric

composition, and for this reason was non-representational..The constructive

nature of their art lay in building a composition by means of simple geometric

building blocks. Constructivism received important impulses from cubism and

from the dynamic fragmentation of futurism, which also put together their

compositions from geometricizing shapes.

Secession: , Secessionist art was also directed against the

propagation of historical styles, and turned more towards stylized plant-like

forms. Typical of the movement is an ornamental, linear graphic style

exemplified by the curving lines and floral motif of Peter Behrens’ woodcut The

Kiss

Biedermeier: Biedermeier is carried over to painting and

literature as well.

In the cultivation of home decor, this style places simpler forms and fine

materials with shiny, polished surfaces in opposition to the ostentatious

Empire style.

Photography: Photography is understood as an optical-technical

process that enables copying and keeping pictures permanently. Photography

itself also became an art medium, for example in Bauhaus. Art photography

however was for a long time not considered as such. Henri Cartier-Bresson,

himself a photographer and a painter, saw photography not as a form of art

but rather as a craft: "Photography is a handcraft.

Op-Art : Op-Art is short for "optical art", which is an art style that

plays with the optical perception of the observer

Pop Art : Pop Art is an abbreviation for popular art and

represents a style that developed simultaneously. , pop art oriented itself

strongly to advertising posters, consumer goods and other elements of life in a

big city. Thus pop art wanted to permit items fit for the masses and popular

objects to become art.

SELECTED BUILDINGS

1910–1911 the Fagus Factory, Alfeld an der Leine, Germany 1914 Office and Factory Buildings at the Werkbund Exhibition, 1914,

Cologne, Germany 1921 Sommerfeld House, Berlin, Germany designed for Adolf

Sommerfeld 1922 competition entry for the Chicago Tribune Tower competition 1925–1932 Bauhaus School and Faculty, Housin, Dessau, Germany 1936 Village College, Impington, Cambridge, England 1936 66 Old Church Street, Chelsea, London, England 1937 The Gropius House, Lincoln, Massachusetts, USA 1939 Waldenmark, Wrightstown Township, Pennsylvania (with Marcel

Breuer) 1942–1944 Aluminum City Terrace housing project, New Kensington,

Pennsylvania, USA 1949–1950 Harvard Graduate Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

(The Architects' Collaborative)[6] 1945–1959 Michael Reese Hospital, Chicago, Illinois, USA - Master

planned 37-acre (150,000 m2) site and led the design for at least 8 of the approx. 28 buildings.[citation needed]

1957–1960 University of Baghdad, Baghdad, Iraq 1963–1966 John F. Kennedy Federal Office Building, Boston,

Massachusetts, USA 1948 Peter Thacher Junior High School, 1957-1959 Dr. and Mrs. Carl Murchison House, Provincetown,

Massachusetts, USA (The Architects' Collaborative) 1958–1963 Pan Am Building (now the Metlife Building), New York, with

Pietro Belluschi and project architects Emery Roth & Sons 1957 Interbau Apartment blocks, Hansaviertel, Berlin, Germany, with

The Architects' Collaborative and Wils Ebert 1960 Temple Oheb Shalom (Baltimore, Maryland) 1960 the Gropiusstadt building complex, Berlin, Germany 1961 The award-winning Wayland High School, Wayland, Massachusetts,

USA (demolished 2012) 1959–1961 Embassy of the United States, Athens, Greece (The

Architects' Collaborative and consulting architect Pericles A. Sakellarios) 1968 Glass Cathedral, Thomas Glassworks, Amberg 1967– 69 Tower East, Shaker Heights, Ohio, this was Gropius' last major

project.

Fagus Factory in Alfeld - UNESCO

World Heritage Centre .Fagus

Factory in Alfeld is a 10-building

complex - began around 1910 to

the design of Walter Gropius,

which is a landmark in the

development of modern

architecture and industrial

design. Serving all stages of

manufacture, storage and

dispatch of lasts used by the shoe industry, the complex, which is still

operational today, is situated in Alfeld an der Leine in Lower Saxony. With its

groundbreaking vast expanses of glass panels and functionalist aesthetics, the

complex foreshadowed the work of the Bauhaus school and is a landmark in

the development of architecture in

Europe and North America. For the

first time a complete facade is

conceived in glass.

Gropiusstadt is a locality within

the Berlin borough. It was named

after the architect who projected the

complex. Building of the quarter,

initially named Britz-Buckow-Rudow and projected in a modernist style.

Pan Am Building is an example of an International

style skyscraper. It is purely commercial in design

with large floors, simple massing, with an absence

of ornamentation inside and out. Pan Am originally

occupied 15 floors of the building. Today the

building is one of the most recognizable skyscrapers

in the City.

Reference: Wikipedia(internet). Bauhaus,

The Tate Collection. The Walter Gropius

Archive, Routledge