Walter Gropius (redirected from Walter Adolph Gropius)

Gropius, Walter 

Born May 18, 1883, in Berlin; died July 5, 1969, in Boston, Mass., USA. German architect and architectural theorist. One of the founders of functionalism and a man who consistently worked out the principles of rationalism in architecture.

Gropius studied at higher technical schools in Berlin and Munich (1903–07) and was influenced by P. Behrens, whose assistant he was from 1907 to 1910. Gropius sought to delineate the design and function of buildings in their external appearance, which led to innovation in architectural forms. For example, ribbons of glass girding the building of the Fagus shoe-last factory in Alfeld (Lower Saxony, 1911, in collaboration with A. Meyer) emphasize the lightness of the curtain walls. In the administration building at the German Werkbund Exhibition in Cologne (1914) the contrasting of brick walls with light metal structures and glass elements is striking. In 1918, Gropius headed the schools of applied and fine arts in Weimar, combining them under the name State Bauhaus in 1919. While at the Bauhaus, he was one of the first to begin mastering the possibilities for creating new forms in contemporary architecture and design that lay in industrial production. Gropius became involved in the social problems of architecture, but he failed to go beyond the limits of reformist illusions. In series production of articles designed by the architect-designer and in industrial housing Gropius saw a means of making architecture and the material and everyday aspects of man’s surroundings democratic. After clashing with the conservative Weimar authorities, Gropius moved the Bauhaus to Dessau, where he built a new building for it (1925–26); this building served as a manifesto of the principles of rationalistic architecture advocated by him. Here, the problem of organizing functional processes dictates the asymmetrical placing of the masses of the building. In the late 1920’s, Gropius established close ties with the masters of Soviet constructivism. In 1928, Gropius moved to Berlin and devoted himself to the problem of so-called low-cost dwellings. He worked out a method of “linear construction” in which standardized units are laid out in parallel rows (the settlement of Dammerstock near Karlsruhe, 1927–28), and he also created several prototypes of low-cost apartments widely used in Western Europe. After the Nazis came to power, Gropius emigrated to Great Britain in 1934. Together with the architect M. Fry, he created a series of buildings (such as the Impington Village College, 1936–39), which helped to spread functionalism in the country’s architecture. Gropius moved to the USA in 1937, and from 1937 to 1952 was a professor (chairman after 1938) of the department of architecture at Harvard University in Cambridge. He built the New Kensington industrial settlement near Pittsburgh (1941, with M. L. Breuer), with lightly constructed homes which were placed so that they would harmonize with the area’s topography. In 1946, Gropius organized a creative group of eight young architects (the Architects’ Collaborative) and planned architectural complexes of buildings for Harvard University in Cambridge (1949–50) and the university in Baghdad (construction started in 1961). Relying on the experience of functionalism and making use of new achievements in construction technology, he built the neoclassical building of the US Embassy in Athens (1957–61) and the Pan American Airlines skyscraper in New York (1963).

WORKS

Internationale Architektur. Munich, 1925.
Bauhausbauten in Desssau. Munich, 1930.
The New Architecture and the Bauhaus. London [1935].
Wege zu einer optischen Kultur. Frankfurt am Main, 1956.
In Russian translation:
Granitsy arkhitektury. Moscow, 1971.

REFERENCES

Giedion, S. Walter Gropius: Mensch und Werk. Stuttgart, 1954.
Argan, G. C. Walter Gropius e la Bauhaus, 2nd ed. [Turin, 1957.]
Fitch, J. M. Walter Gropius. New York, 1960.

A. V. IKONNIKOV