BAUHAUS ZEITGEIST, THE ARCHITECTURE OF WALTER GROPIUS

The Architecture of Walter Gropius

Bauhaus Archive Berlin Museum of Design

BAUHAUS ZEITGEIST

The architecture of Walter Gropius

Bauhaus 1919 to 1923: Radical innovations in design education

Edited by James Volks & Susan Harrison

Bauhaus Archive Berlin

Museum of Design

Walter Gropius

FOREWARD

Bauhaus was a revolutionary art school and movement in Germany in 1919-1933. The school taught some of the most famous names in modernism as well as attracting established artists in the field. The Bauhaus and the design styles associated with it were hugely influential on a global scale. Bauhaus design is often abstract, angular, and geometric with little ornamentation. Bauhaus architecture characteristics included functional shapes, simple colour schemes, industrial materials, balanced asymmetry, and holistic design. The Bauhaus architecture principals were there is no border between artist and craftsman, form follows function, minimalism, smart uses of resources and simplicity and effectiveness. Bauhaus was so influential as it ushered the modern wave, popularized materials, and influenced modern course instruction. Walter Gropius was the founder of Bauhaus and one of his most important buildings was the Dessau building, which was the home of the design school from 1925-1930.

The Architecture of Walter Gropius

INTRODUCTION

The Bauhaus building Dessau

One of the reasons behind the City of Dessau’s rapid decision to adopt the Bauhaus was its shortage of accommodation, Gropius was at that time arguing for the technicalization and rationalization of residential architecture, and his ideas fell on eager ears. It was not long before he was commissioned to build a model estate in the Törten district of Dessau. Gropius was only to head the Bauhaus Dessau for another three years, from March 1925 to March 1928. During this period the school reached another pinnacle in its career. The new school building designed by Gropius, and the Masters’ houses he built for the Bauhaus teaching staff, became a site of pilgrimage, attracting hundreds of visitors every month from home and -increasingly- aboard. Bauhaus students gave regular guided tours. The Törten estate offered Gropius his first opportunity to demonstrate industrialized building techniques, and the labour exchange he built for the City of Dessau (1927-29) was his most logical and attractive example of functional architecture.

One of the reasons behind the City of Dessau’s rapid decision to adopt the Bauhaus was its shortage of accommodation, Gropius was at that time arguing for the technicalization and rationalization of residential architecture, and his ideas fell on eager ears. It was not long before he was commissioned to build a model estate in the Törten district of Dessau. Gropius was only to head the Bauhaus Dessau for another three years, from March 1925 to March 1928. During this period the school reached another pinnacle in its career. The new school building designed by Gropius, and the Masters’ houses he built for the Bauhaus teaching staff, became a site of pilgrimage, attracting hundreds of visitors every month from home and -increasingly- aboard. Bauhaus students gave regular guided tours. The Törten estate offered Gropius his first opportunity to demonstrate industrialized building techniques, and the labour exchange he built for the City of Dessau (1927-29) was his most logical and attractive example of functional architecture.

Walter Gropius 01

Fig1 portrait of Walter Gropius

The Architecture of Walter Gropius

Fig 2 Balconies at Dessau Germany, 2014

Walter Gropius next to his entry for Chicago Tribune Tower Competition, 1922. Fig 3

Portrait of the architect Walter Gropius, photographed by Lucia Moholy, 1927

Fig 4

Fig 5 Bauhaus Dessau

Walter Gropius was one of the pioneers of modern architecture, he was the founder of the Bauhaus, a revolutionary art school in Germany. The Bauhaus replaced traditional teaching methods with a flexible artistic community, focusing on a collaborative approach to learning and the creation of integrated design projects. Later, the Bauhaus also incorporated mass production techniques into its output, designing objects and buildings for a wide audience. The school taught some of the most famous names in modernism as well as attracting established artists working within the fields. Despite its relatively short-lived existence, the Bauhaus and the design styles associated with it were hugely influential on a global scale, but particularly so in the United States where many of the artists moved before and during the Second World War to escape persecution by the Nazis. Gropius believed that all design should be approached through a study of the problems that needed to be addressed and he consequently followed the modernist principle that functionality should dictate form. He applied these beliefs to wider social issues, designing affordable housing in the interwar period and seeking to improve physical conditions for factory workers through his architecture. As well as pushing boundaries in architectural design, Gropius also experimented with innovative building and assembly techniques using prefabricated units and new materials such as reinforced concrete. Similar ideas cheap, mass produced housing in the 1940s. Gropius is credited with the introduction of modernist architecture to the United States through his design of the Gropius House and his teaching at Harvard University. Gropius’s buildings were in stark contrast to previous architectural styles.

1913 The Fagus Factory

Sommerfeld House Monument of the March Dead

1921

1922

Fig 12 Students of the Bauhaus in Dessau. Photo: Stifung Bauhaus Dessau

The Dessau building

Glass Steel Light

“The Bauhaus building, commissioned by the city of Dessau, was begun in autumn 1925, completed The building covers a ground area of 113,400 sq ft and contains approximately 250,600 sq ft of floor space. It cost 902,500 marks or 27.8 marks per cubic m of space. Including all extra expenses. Purchases of the inventory amounted to 126,000 marks. The whole complex consists of three parts. The wing of the ‘Technische Lehranstalten’ (technical college, later called Berufsschule) contains ad The auditorium on the elevated ground floor of this building leads to a one-story, intermediate wing and to the studio building, which contains

the recreational facilities for students. The stage between auditorium and dining room can bev opened at both ends for performances so that the spectators can sit on either side. On festive occasions, all stage walls can be wwopened, thus combining dining room, stage, auditorium and foyer into one large festival hall. The kitchen with its facilities is adjacent to the dining room. A spacious terrace overlooking a large sports field is in front of the In the five upper floors of the studio building are twenty-eight studio apartments for students of the Bauhaus, with a kitchenette on each floor. The baths, gymnasium and changing rooms and an electric laundry are in the basement.

Fig 13 Building of Staatliches Bauhaus in Dessau

needs a good image of itself. That is the job of an architect”

“Society

Walter Gropius

The Impact

LUDWIG MIES VAN DER ROHE

Fig 17 Barcelona Pavillion 1929 by Mies van Der Rohe

Fig 16 Portrait of Mies van Der Rohe from 1934

Architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was an early director of the Bauhaus in Berlin, a school where the earliest modernist principles of architecture blossomed. Mies came to the U.S. in the late 1930s and brought with him some powerful, even radical, new ideas about architecture. Mies believed that “less is more” and that “God is in the details.” Both of these tenets are in evidence (and occasionally in contradiction) in his sleek, modern Seagram Building an avant-garde statement when it was completed in 1958. Born in Germany the young Ludwig acquired an interest in architecture thanks to his stonemason father. After seconday school, he moved to Berlin where he was able to receive several apprenticeships without ever receiving any formal architectural training. Only after a couple of years working alongside furniture designer Bruno Paul, Mies received his first indepented commission to design a house in the suburbs. His exceptional style and perfect execution impressed prominent architect Peter Behrens, who invited

him to join his studio and work alongside figures who later became pioneering artists themselves such as Le Corbusier or Walter Gropius. Preoccupied with the necessity of a new architectural vision encapsulating the spirit of modern times, he developed avant-garde ideas that reformed the man-made environment: simplicity of forms; industrial materials such as industrial steel and plate glass; clean, unadorned interiors would become the main elements of his style. In the 1920s and early 1930s, van der Rohe’s reputation took off and he briefly served as the Bauhaus’s third and final director until 1933, when the school closed down due to political pressure. In 1937, he relocated to Chicago, where he continued to design, build and educate. The abundent commissions he received after the turmoil of World War II gave van der Rohe an opportunity to execute his first large-scale projects including his pioneering skysrapers of steel covered by large surface areas of glass windows.

Fig 18 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Seagram Building on New York City’s Park Ave

The Architecture of Walter Gropius

Fig 19 Le Corbusier, Villa Savoye Poissy, France 1927

Fig 20 Le Corbusier, Corbusierhaus, Berlin, Germany 1979

LE CORBUSIER

Le Corbusier was born in Switzerland, although he studied and worked primarily in France. In 1909, He attended the Deutsche Werkbund Congress in Berlin and acquired a new perspective on the relationship between art and modern industrial production, which took him even further from his earlier Arts and Crafts years. Deeply impressed by Peter Behrens’s AEG Turbine Factory, he worked for five months in his studio, alongside Walter Gropius and Mies van der Rohe. He met Amédée Ozenfant in 1918, and they established a new art movement called Purism. Together they published the Purist journal L’Esprit Nouveau . In 1922, Le Corbusier presented an urban design plan called Immeubles Villas. Le Corbusier’s belief that modern architectural planning could raise the quality of life for city inhabitants. In 1929, Le Corbusier began to work on theVilla Savoy . This residence provided a clear example of Le Corbusier’s five points of architecture, which had

been published in L’Esprit Nouveau and his 1923 book with Ozenfant called Toward an Architecture . The Villa Savoye is also considered to be an excellent example of the International style, an architectural style that also represented the beginning decades of the Modern movement. Le Corbusier, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe , and Walter Gropius were considered to be the pioneers of the International style. In 1935, Le Corbusier published a book on urbanism called The Radiant City. After World War II, Le Corbusier used the ideas in his book to create housing blocks around France, such as the Unite d’Habitation of Marseilles . He also designed the first planned city in India called Chandigarh. Not only did Le Corbusier design the overall layout of the city in the 1950s, but he also designed several administration buildings in Chandigarh, such as the parliament building, a university, a courthouse, and some furniture as well. The artist died on August 27, 1965.

Fig 21 Portrait of Le Corbusier, 1950

BAUHAUS INFLUENCE ON CONTEMPORARY ARCHITECTURE

The Architecture of Walter Gropius

Fig 21 Tell Aviv Bauhaus 2013 Boris Bauer

Fig 22 The white city Tell Aviv, 2003/ Boaz Rottem

Fig 23 Bauhaus Tel Aviv Ehrlich house

Fig 24 Bauhaus Tel Aviv, The Bszuzsa building

Fig 25 Phaeno Science center, Render byZaha Hadid Architects

Fig 27 BMW central building, 2005, by Zaha Hadid/ Helene Bine

Fig 28 Walt Disney Center by Frank Grehy 2003, photo by JRC/Alamy

Fig 29 Vitra Design Museum-1989by Frank Grehy

Fig 26 Heydar Aliyev Center, Baku Azerbaijan 2013/ Zaha Hadid Architects

END MATTER

Bibliography

Books

Whitford, Frank. Bauhaus. Thames and Hudson. 1984

Droste, Magdalena. Bauhaus, bauhaus-archiv berlin. Taschen. 2022

Kentgens-Craig, Margaret. The Dessau Bauhaus building 1926-1999. Birkhauser Verlag AG. 1998

Besset, Maurice. Le Corbusier. Rizzoli International publications. 1999

Images

P8 Imagno/ Hulton archive collection/getty images

P10 AP ( bauhaus archiv berlin/ walter gropius vegap

P10 Walter Gropius at Harvard University in 1937

P10 Dessau by Bauhaus Museum

P12 fagus factory/ Vanni Archive / getty images

P12 sommerfeld/ Carl Rogge / harvard art museums

P13 dessau/ Hohl/ Getty images

132 gropius house/ David Carmack/ Historic New England

P19 Sea gram Ezra Stoller/Esto, Canadian Center For Architecture

P20 Seagram Bettmann / Contributeur

P20 Mies Van Der Rohe Keystone / Intermittent

Websites and Articles

about Walter Gropius by UNKNW www.aboutgropius.com

Bauhaus Architecture: Origins and characteristics of bauhaus by Masterclass https: www.masterclass. com

Bauhaus Dessau by Bauhaus Dessau foundation www.bauhaus-dessau.de

Modernist architecture: the Bauhaus and beyond by the Victoria and Albert museum www.vam.ac.uk

Ignant’s guide to Le Corbusier’s 10 most significant buildings www.ignant.com

10 that changed America by wttw Interactive.wttw.com

P20 Cemal Eden

P21 Le corbusier Keystone-France / Contributeur

P21 Villa la roche /LStrike

P21 National museum of western art / Gunnar

Klack

Colophon

Published in 2023

Edited by Lauren Mckeever

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Lauren Mckeever

The Architecture of Walter Gropius

Bauhaus was a revolutionary art school and movement in Germany in 1919-1933. The school taught some of the most famous names in modernism as well as attracting established artists in the field. The Bauhaus and the design styles associated with it were hugely influential on a global scale. Bauhaus design is often abstract, angular, and geometric with little ornamentation. Bauhaus architecture characteristics included functional shapes, simple colour schemes, industrial materials, balanced asymmetry, and holistic design. The Bauhaus architecture principals were there is no border between artist and craftsman, form follows function, minimalism, smart uses of resources and simplicity and effectiveness. Bauhaus was so influential as it ushered the modern wave, popularized materials, and influenced modern course instruction. Walter Gropius was the founder of Bauhaus and one of his most important buildings was the Dessau building, which was the home of the design school from 1925-1930.