Gropius, Walter

Walter Gropius is the great-nephew of the famous architect Martin Gropius . His parents were Walter Gropius , who at one time was a secret adviser on construction issues in the German Empire, and Manon Gropius , nee Scharnweber . In 1903, Walter Gropius enrolled as an architect at the Technical University of Munich . ^[6]

In 1907, Gropius began work in the workshop of Peter Behrens , where other famous architects worked together with him: Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier . In 1910 , after three years of working with Behrens, Gropius began his independent career as a designer and architect. As a designer, he designs interior equipment, wallpaper , serial furniture , a car body and a diesel locomotive . His first significant architectural work was the building of the Fagus-Werke shoe factory in Alfeld on Line , which he designed with Adolf Meyer . This building became the starting point in its architectural activities, it is considered a key example of early modernism architecture ^[7] . In the 1920s this trend in architecture was defined by the concepts of “ New Construction ” ( Neues Bauen ) and “ New Materiality ” ( “Neue Sachlichkeit” ).

For the exhibition of the German Union of Craft Enterprises ( Deutsches Werkbund ), which was held in 1914 in Cologne , Gropius and Meyer jointly build the “Model Factory” ( Musterfabrik ), which later also had a significant impact on modern architecture. A feature of this building is the round glazed towers of stairs, which later, in the 1920s, became a popular artistic element of Erich Mendelssohn in his department stores.

For many years, Gropius had friendly relations with Felix Auerbach , a professor of physics at the University of Jena , where he designed and built a house for the Auerbach couple.

After World War I, Gropius became the founder of the Bauhaus . The Bauhaus School (State House of Construction) was established in Weimar in 1919 as a result of the unification of the Saxon-Weimar Graduate School of Fine Arts and founded by the Henry van de Velde Saxon-Weimar School of Applied Arts. Being the initiator of the creation of a new educational institution, Henry van de Velde offers the candidacy of the young Berlin architect Walter Gropius as the head. Gropius took up the post of director first in Weimar until 1926 and after that in Dessau . In 1928 , he handed over the post to the Swiss town planner Mayer, who was dismissed for political reasons in 1930. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe ruled the Bauhaus until its closure in 1933. Focusing on the concept of functionalism, Gropius nevertheless considered the object as a form of expression of an internal idea ^[9] .

Since 1926, Gropius has been intensively engaged in mass housing construction, solving urban and social problems, and advocates the rationalization of construction. He carries out numerous projects of residential buildings: the village of Dessau-Turten (in 1926-1931), Dammerstock (in 1928-1929), a residential quarter in the Berlin district of Siemensstadt (1929/30) and the project “Coastal development of Lake Wannsee "In Berlin 1930/1931

In 1934 , after the National Socialists attacked the Bauhaus, calling it the “Church of Marxism, ” Gropius emigrated to England, and in 1937 moved to Cambridge to the USA, where he worked as a professor of architecture at Harvard 's Graduate School of Design .

In 1946 , Gropius founded the group The Architects Collaborative, Inc. (TAC). The result of this group's work is the Graduate Center der Harvard University in Cambridge (1949/50); among Harvard students of Gropius, the prolific Yeo Ming Pei .

In the last years of his life, Gropius returns to Berlin, where he designs a nine-story residential quarter in the Hansafiertel district in 1957 as part of the Interbau construction exhibition ( German Interbau ). The concave southern façade and the open ground floor are considered a typical example of the so-called late Art Nouveau . In 1963, Gropius was awarded the title of Honorary Doctor of the Free University of Berlin .

Gropius died July 5, 1969 in Boston , USA.

• Fagus Plant, Alfeld-on-Line (with A. Meyer ), 1910-1911, 1924-1925
• Design of the German Werkbund Pavilion at the World Exhibition in Ghent (Belgium); gold medal of the exhibition, 1913
• Design of the exhibition premises of the Joint Workshops in Fine and Applied Arts (Berlin), 1913
• Design projects for sleeper rail cars of a new type manufactured at the Koenigsberg plants and cars for an automobile company in Cologne, 1913
• Projects of residential and factory buildings in Wittenberg, Frankfurt, Posen, Vienna, Berlin and Pomerania (all in collaboration with A. Meyer), 1913
• The administrative and factory building and machine room for the Model Factory for the exhibition of the German Union of Craft Enterprises in Cologne (co-authored by A. Meyer), 1914
• Factory, trade and public buildings in Pomerania, 1914
• The Baumfeld House in Berlin (project co-authored with A. Meyer; construction together with Bauhaus students), 1919
• Design of a monument to the victims of the Kappovsky putsch in Weimar, 1921
• Competitive design for a shoe factory in Erfurt (co-authored with A. Meyer; second prize), 1921
• The building of the agricultural machinery factory “Gebr. Kappe & Co. ”, Alfeld, 1922-1924
• Residential building of Professor Dr. Felix Auerbach, Jena, 1924
• The building of the municipal theater in Jena, a number of residential buildings in Jena, Thuringia, Berlin, Alfeld, 1923-1924
• Design of the Chicago Tribune Editorial Office (co-authored with A. Meyer), 1923-1924
• The Bauhaus building in Dessau (project co-authored with A. Meyer; construction together with Bauhaus students), 1925–1926
• Teaching Corps (“House of Masters” - “Meisterhäuser”) of the Bauhaus in Dessau, 1925-1926
• Decoration of the exhibition of the German Werkbund in Stockholm, 1926
• The residential village of Turten in Dessau, 1926-1928
• The project of the building of the “Total Theater” for Berlin in accordance with the ideas of E. Piskator , 1927
• two buildings in the Weissenhof exhibition residential village in Stuttgart, 1927
• Theresa Zuckerkandl House, Jena, 1927-1929
• Dammerstock Settlement in Karlsruhe (with Otto Hesler ), 1928-1929
• Design of ordinary residential buildings in the area of ​​Siemensstadt near Berlin, 1929-1930
• The decoration of the pavilion of the German Werkbund in Paris, 1929-1930
• The design of the car "Adler", 1929-1930
• Competitive projects of theater buildings for Kharkov and the Palace of Soviets for Moscow, 1930
• Private architectural practice in London (co-authored with M. Fry), 1934-1937
• Gropius Haus, Lincoln, Massachusetts, 1937
• Packaged House System zusammen mit Konrad Wachsmann (Lincoln (Massachusetts, USA)), 1941-1943
• Housing for graduate students at Harvard University (co-authored with Brown, Lyford and Frobes), 1948-1950
• a series of furniture projects for the Austrian company Tonet, 1950
• Building Designs for the Boston Center in Boston and McCormick Office in Chicago, 1953
• Wohnhaus Stichweh, Hannover, 1952-1953
• Massachusetts Elementary School Building Designs, 1954-1959
• 9-storey residential building for the Interbau exhibition in West Berlin (together with TAS and W. Ebert)
• Design and construction of the complex of Baghdad University (together with TAS and R. McMillan), 1957
• Pan-Am-Wolkenkratzer in Manhattan, 1957/59
• Planung der Gropiusstadt im damaligen West-Berlin, since 1960 (later modified)
• The building of the US Embassy in Athens, 1956-1961
• The project of the building "Monico" on Sq. Piccadilly Circus in London, 1961
• Porzellanfabrik Rosenthal am Rotbühl, 1965 in Selba
• Die Glaskathedrale (officially: Thomas Glaswerk), 1968 in Amberg
• Porto Carras Meliton and Sithonia hotels, designed in 1967-68 for the Porto Carras Grand Resort, Greece, Halkidiki Peninsula. Construction was carried out after the death of Gropius by his student; started in 1973, completed in 1979-80.

In 1910, Walter Gropius met Alma Mahler , then the wife of composer Gustav Mahler . After the composer's death, in 1915, Gropius and Alma got married. In this marriage, in 1916, the daughter of Manon was born. The marriage was dissolved in 1920.

In 1923, Gropius married journalist Ilse Fran.

• Gropius V. The boundaries of architecture (series: Problems of material and artistic culture). - ed. V.I. Tasalova. - M .: Art, 1971. - 286 p.
• Gropius W. The New Architecture and the Bauhaus, London, Faber and Faber, 1935. - 112 p.
• Gropius W. Scope of Total Architecture. New York Harper and Bros, 1955. - 155 p.

• Vasilieva E. Ideal and utilitarian in the system of international style: subject and object in the design concept of the 20th century. // International Journal of Cultural Research, No. 4 (25), 2016, p. 72-80.
• Tasalov V. “Total Architecture” - Utopia or Reality? // Gropius V. Borders of architecture. M .: "Art", 1971. c. 8 - 70.
• Shukurova A. "The Blue Horseman" in the Bauhaus // Shukurova A. Architecture of the West Architecture of the West and the world of art of the XX century. M .: Stroyizdat, 1990; ISBN 5-274-00198-X .
• Müller U. Raum, Bewegung und Zeit im Werk von Walter Gropius und Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-05-004059-9 .
• Pieper J. Das Fagus-Werk; Prinzipien und Elemente historischer Baukunst im Gründungsbau der Moderne. Aachen: Geymüller Verlag für Architektur, 2016, ISBN 978-3-943164-11-4 .
• Reginald I. Walter Gropius. Der Mensch und sein Werk. Gebrüder Mann. Berlin, 1983, ISBN 3-7861-1372-6 .
• Reginald I. Walter Gropius: An illustrated Biography of the Creator of the Bauhaus. Berlin: Bulfinch Press, 1991. ISBN 0-8212-1753-4 .

•   Wikimedia Commons has media related to Walter Gropius
• www.bildindex.de Photographs by V. Gropius (German)
• Biography and work of V. Gropius (German)
• Biography on the website of the German Historical Museum (German)
• Dessau - Bauhaus city (German)