Walter Gropius, an early 20th-century architect, is best known for creating the Bauhaus school of design. Despite his poor drawing skills, he designed buildings that marry function and design, noted for unadorned construction and lots of glass. He fled Nazi Germany and taught at Harvard, designing functional buildings around the world.
Walter Gropius was an early 20th-century architect best known for creating the Bauhaus school of design. A second generation architect, Gropius could not draw well and is best known for designing buildings rather than being able to plan them carefully. His designs marry function and design and are noted for rigorous, unadorned construction and lots of glass.
The famous architect was born in 1883 in Berlin, the son of architect Walter Adolph Gropius. Despite his poor drawing skills, he formed a partnership with the young architect Adolph Meyer. One of their earliest projects is remembered as one of their largest: a shoe factory called Faguswerk, built in Alfeld-an-der-Leine, Germany. The building is considered by experts to be an excellent example of modernism, the style for which Walter Gropius would become famous.
With the completion of Faguswerk in 1913, Walter Gropius seemed poised for a successful career. His work was interrupted only a year later by the outbreak of the First World War, for which he was drafted in the early stages of the fighting. He was wounded and nearly killed in battle, but survived and returned to work.
In 1919 he was appointed head of the Grand Ducal Saxon School of Arts and Crafts and quickly transformed it into the Bauhaus design school. Originally, the school’s focus was on modernism as an art form, without focusing specifically on architecture for some time. The completed works of the school used unadorned design, industrial resources and functionality as the main principles. He became world famous for his simple modernist design.
When the Nazis came to power in Germany in the 1930s, Walter Gropius fled the country as he opposed the regime. After several years in England, he came to America and began teaching at the prestigious Harvard University. In 1938 he entered into a partnership with another architect, Marcel Breuer. Together, they implemented Bauhaus principles in the construction of the Harvard Graduate Center and the US Embassy in Athens, Greece. With Pietro Belluschi, Gropius also designed the Metropolitan Life Building in midtown Manhattan.
Gropius designed a variety of functional buildings, from factories and housing projects in Germany to towering office buildings in America. In 1945 he founded The Architect’s Collaborative, a firm that would be a dominant presence in architecture for nearly fifty years. In 1969 Walter Gropius died in Boston at the age of 86.
While the industrial-looking Bauhaus style isn’t universally loved, it does have a lot of fans. While some find the functionality and simplicity depressing or ugly, proponents believe it is harmonious and full of integrity. Walter Gropius, despite his inability to design his own architectural plans, is an important figure in the history of design. His legacy is far-reaching, with buildings he has located in countries around the world.
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