walter gropius.pdf
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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