THE FAGUS FACTORY AS AN ANTICIPATED BAUHAUS MANIFESTO

TABLE OF CONTENT: 1. Preface 2. NEUES BAUEN- Modernism in Germany 3. THE ORIGINS OF THE SWITCH IN STYLE MOVEMENT 4. PETER BEHREN – The Contributing Starter of the Modern Industrial Architecture Style.

5. WALTER GROPIUS – Back to the future!

6. THE FAGUS FACTORY – Industry and technology gave birth to new uniform style.

7. Fagus Factory Became The Anticipated Manifesto For Bauhaus 8. REFERENCE

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1. PREFACE

"A modern, harmonic and lively architecture is the visible sign of an authentic democracy."

-Walter Gropius

Modernist architecture, or modernism, is a style which is an iconic movement in history of architecture which emerged in the early 20th century, it was based upon new and pioneering innovative technologies of construction. It was a reaction to the largescale changes in both technology and society. Modernism branded minimalism and cut-off ornamentation. New use of materials like glass, steel and reinforced concrete was chiefly practised in this movement. Futurism, Constructivism, brutalism, De Stijl, and Bauhaus are different response styles of Modern architecture which evolved over different time period and places.

Founder of the Bauhaus was Walter Adolph Georg Gropius, he was the one who looked and transformed the way architecture was perceived. Gropius was amongst the pioneers in field of architecture who brought to us the modernist architecture, he has through the Bauhaus made a decisive contribution to its recognition. Gropius correctly themes out that the 'new architecture' began by being stark and formal, and pursued norms or standards.

The Fagus factory is one of the epitome building structures of the early modernism style period that set the bars for development of modernist architecture, it was the trend setter of modern industrial architecture. It reflects early works of the founder architect of Bauhaus Walter Gropius.

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2. NEUES BAUEN- Modernism in Germany

The German architectural modernism was known by many names such as Neues Bauen (New building), Bauhaus style, and the International style, amongst others. The style blended almost seamlessly with German Expressionist architecture, from which many architects gradually migrated to the modernist style, which has somewhat cleaner lines and less dramatic shapes. Modernism became a style that was so prolific in Germany that many of architects adapted and practiced this style, probably hundreds of architects which worked in the style. It was associated with a systematic method to the function of buildings, a strictly rational use of often new materials, structural innovation and the elimination of ornamentation. The style became characterised by an emphasis on volume, asymmetrical compositions.

New Architecture differ fundamentally in an organic sense from those of the old, they are not the personal whims of a handful of architects avid for innovation at all cost, but simply the inevitable logical product of the intellectual, social and technical conditions of our age. A new conception of building, based on realities, had been born and with it had arrived a new conception of space. Modern technique had backed to the crucial phase in the renascence of architecture. New synthetic substances-steel, concrete, glass were actively prevailing the traditional raw materials of construction. Their rigidity and molecular density had made it possible to erect wide-spanned and all but transparent structures for which the skill of previous ages was strikingly inadequate. This enormous saving in structural volume was an architectural revolution in itself. The vital influence on Bauhaus was modernism, a cultural movement whose origins were as early as the 1880s, its existence felt in Germany before the World War, despite the prevailing conservatism.

Peter Behrens and Walter Gropius works were recognised contributors to this time and were innovative at the time to bring about the change.

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3. THE ORIGINS OF THE SWITCH IN STYLE MOVEMENT

Figure 1: Internal view of AEG Turbine Factory.

For many people in the late 19th century and beginning of 20th century Industrial architecture as a concept was very unfamiliar and contradiction in terms. It was mostly so that architecture was perceived to be mainly beauty, fine art something which was beyond the utilitarianism that was expected from the industry. Solutions to how to provide industrial structures which could full fill the function and also be recognised as works of architecture were witnessed in these times.

The origins of the iconic movement of Bauhaus started in the late 19th century, in concerns about the soullessness of modern manufacturing, and doubts about art's loss of social relevance. The Bauhaus intended to reunify fine art and functional design, creating practical objects with amalgamation of artworks.

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This profound optimism, this faith in the transformative power of experimentation in the crafts, attracted some of Europe’s leading figures. Peter Behrens and Walter Gropius works were recognised contributors to this time and were innovative at the time to bring about the change.

Figure 2: Ar .Peter Behrens

Figure 3: Ar .Walter Gropius

These were men who not only were committed in advancement of German industry but also but also to the icons of the deutsche werkbund and to the fact that industrialists were responsible both to their workers and to the better working conditions for them. Moreover to the taste of the country at large through the visual impacts of their buildings and products. Behrens and Gropius provided industry an important creative innovative stimulus setting them disciplines of construction and expression which were to affect their architecture an important way.

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4. PETER BEHREN – The Contributing Starter Of The Modern Industrial Architecture Style.

"Type is one of the most eloquent means of expression in every epoch of style. Next to architecture, it gives the most characteristic portrait of a period and the most severe testimony of a nation's intellectual status."

-Peter Behrens

Figure 4: Exterior view of AEG Turbine Factory

In the start in June 1907, Peter Behrens' pioneering industrial design work for the German electrical company AEG successfully integrated art and mass production on a large scale. He designed consumer products, standardized parts, created clean-lined designs for the company's graphics, developed a consistent corporate identity, built the modernist landmark AEG Turbine Factory, and made full use of newly developed materials such as poured concrete and exposed steel.

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Behrens was a founding member of the Werkbund, Behrens' achievements are not to be underestimated, and his importance to the development of architecture might best be understood by looking at three young architects who worked in his studio around 1910: Walter Gropius ,Le Corbusier, and Mies van der Rohe,.

AEG had established a strong example which held its own in its own built up in the industrial suburbs of Berlin and both Walter Gropius and Adolf Meyer worked for him in this period.

Figure 5: Construction phase of AEG Turbine Factory

This structure based on a grid of steel stanchions and beams with large expanses of glass has been moulded into an easily identifiable piece of monumental machine age classicism it was a calculated piece of propaganda for the AEG combine linking the image of massive power to the cool analysis of reason Behrens designed this monogram in 1908 . The rhythm of glass panels and brick runs through the length of the structure undisturbed by the steel supports. From the AEG Turbine Factory, it is not difficult to trace a lineage to Walter Gropius' design for the Fagus Factory four years later, and then onward to the rest of the modern movement.

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5. WALTER GROPIUS – Back to the future!

Pioneering Masters Of Modernist

Figure 6: Walter Gropius

Architecture.

Walter Adolph Georg Gropius (18 May 1883 – 5 July 1969) was a German architect and founder of the Bauhaus School, who, along with Alvar Aalto, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright, is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of modernist architecture. He is a founder of Bauhaus in Weimar (1919). Gropius was also a leading architect of the International Style.1 Born in Berlin, Walter Gropius was the third child of Walter Adolph Gropius and Manon Auguste Pauline Scharnweber (1855–1933), daughter of the Prussian politician Georg Scharnweber (1816-1894). Walter's uncle Martin Gropius (1824-1880) was the architect of the Kunstgewerbemuseum in Berlin.

Gropius could not draw, and was dependent on collaborators and partnerinterpreters throughout his career. Gropius was inspired by William Morris who was an English textile designer, artist, writer, and socialist who founded a design firm and associated English Arts and Crafts Movement.

1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Gropius#Early_career_(1908%E2%80%9314)

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In 1908, after studying architecture in Munich and Berlin for four semesters.

Gropius joined the office of the renowned architect and industrial designer Peter Behrens, one of the first members of the utilitarian school. His fellow employees at this time included Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, and Dietrich Marcks.

In 1910 Gropius left the firm of Behrens and together with fellow employee Adolf Meyer established a practice in Berlin.

Together they share credit for one of the pioneering modernist buildings created

Figure 7: Behrens assistants in the studio 1908

during this period: the Faguswerk in Alfeld-an-der-Leine, Germany, a shoe last factory. Although Gropius and Meyer only designed the facade, the glass curtain walls of this building demonstrated both the modernist principle that form reflects function and Gropius's concern with providing healthful conditions for the working class. The factory is now regarded as one of the crucial founding monuments of European modernism. 2 Foundation of Bauhaus In April 1919, a new director was chosen to lead the recently combined schools of fine and applied arts in the city of Weimar. The appointed candidate was Walter Gropius, from Berlin who was a determined young architect also freshly returned from wartime service in France. Walter Gropius renamed this institute and gave it a new identity known as the: “das Staatliche Bauhaus in Weimar” – the State Bauhaus in Weimar.

2

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Gropius#Early_career_(1908%E2%80%9314)

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Over the subsequent fourteen years, the Bauhaus had found itself among Europe’s best-known and most progressive art schools. In its establishment manifesto, also published in April 1919, Gropius laid down his ideas.

Figure 8: Bahaus

The Bauhaus would provide a new style and ethos of arts education for the newly democratic Germany, a country openly enquiring itself after the disturbing losses of the First World War. Central to the teaching programme would be a return to the crafts, “a new guild … without the class distinctions that raise an arrogant barrier between craftsman and artist”. The ultimate goal of this programme, “the complete building”, as the manifesto continued, “together let us desire, conceive and create the new structure of the future, which will include architecture ,sculpture and painting in one unity and which will one day rise towards heaven from the hands of a million workers like the crystal symbol of a new faith”.

The school operated in three German cities that were -Weimar, from 1919 to 1925; Dessau, from 1925 to 1932; and Berlin, from 1932 to 1933,under three different architect-directors: Walter Gropius from 1919 to 1928; Hannes Meyer from 1928 to 1930; and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe from 1930 until 1933, when the school was closed by its own leadership under immense burden from the Nazi regime, having been painted as a centre of communist intellectualism. Although the school was closed, the staff continued to spread its idealistic precepts as they left Germany and emigrated all over the world.

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"The final goal of all the artistic activity is architecture."

-Walter Gropius

Philosophy behind Walter Gropius

Figure 9: Illustration of Walter Gropius

international style:  Linear and horizontal elements  Primary colours  Smooth surfaces  Use of unconventional materials like steel and glass  Simple geometry often more likely to be rectangle The design innovations commonly associated with Gropius and the Bauhaus the radically simplified forms, the rationality and functionality, and the idea that mass production was reconcilable with the individual artistic spirit—were already partly developed in Germany before the Bauhaus was founded. The ethos that led to the Bauhaus was very much guided by approaches to education reform and by the pre-war arts and crafts movement.3

3

https://www.bauhaus100.com/the-bauhaus/phases/the-origins/

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Technique of Walter Gropius international style:

Figure 10: Curtain wall instlalllation

The promotion of industrialized building conceded with it a belief in team work and an approval of standardization and prefabrication.

By means of technology as a basis, he transformed building into a science of precise mathematical calculations.

Gropius introduced an astounding screen wall system that applied a structural steel frame to support the floors and which allowed the external glass walls to continue interruption. Many masons at that time dint even know how to make this work but Gropius solutions made it possible.

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6. THE FAGUS FACTORY – Industry and technology gave birth to new uniform style.

Figure 11: Fagus Factory

With the revolutionary Fagus Factory by Walter Gropius a new ethos to industrial architecture was born! Gropius brought about the new way of perceiving architecture. It is the first building that set the trend of industrial modernist architecture and gave Walter Gropius a remarkable identity as an architect.

Walter Gropius along with his colleague Adolf Meyer who were working previously with Peter Behrens left his design firm and started to practise architecture on their own. They together contributed to this innovative architecture phenomenon. The duo shared a great contribution to the modernism era and future even worked on Bauhaus.

Fagus Factory is listed as a UNESCO world heritage site in 2011. The factory has been a listed architectural monument since 1946.

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The commission:

Carl Benscheidt, the forward-looking and pioneering company founder earlier had hired architect Eduard Werner , although Werner was a expert in factory design, Benscheidt was not content with the outside appearance of his design.

His factory was separated from Behrens’s by a train line and Benscheidt thought of the building's elevation on that side (north) as a permanent advertisement for his factory. Benscheidt then trusted the young architect Walter Gropius with the task of building a shoe factory. The Fagus Factory signifies an architectural concept that was the first to consider the requirements associated with light, air and clarity and to make use of glass and steel in a fashion corresponding to a brand new construction style.

About the design:

While designing the Fagus Factory it can be noticed that there are various similar linkages to the design of Peter Behren’s AEG turbine factory. It is observed that Walter Gropius was a very curious, smart and ambitious architect he was very much intrigued by the challenges of the curtain wall, he wanted to focus on emphasizing the glass envelope and reduce the visual importance of the supporting pairing elements. Understanding his achievement is better if we look first at the Eduard Werner the original commissioned architect to build the factory.

Figure 12: Concept design for Fagus Factory By Eduard Werner

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the façade is divided up by the brick piers subdivided by thin mullions , the three floors are marked by rows of bricks infill panels all these subdivision even network of windows which at the left end are further Figure 13: Concept design for Fagus Factory By Eduard Werner

divided to express the presence of a number of washrooms and laboratories in that corner.

Gropius altered the original design by Werner just after five months. He proposed and executed the design in his new invented style. He kept the piers but revolutionized the Figure 14: Concept design for Fagus Factory By Walter Gropius

treatment of glass in his enthusiasm to create a glass wall façade Gropius dint even indicate the floor levels with the necessary infill panels as

necessary infill panels as built the floor levels are indicated by simply substituting metal sheets for glass panes in the windows with this simple device Gropius came up with long dark bands

Figure 15: Concept design for Fagus Factory By Walter Gropius

which appear to flow across

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the vertical elements although the brick piers are identical to those in Werner’s design and carry the weight of each story they play far less of a role in their composition the main reason for this is that the glass windows stand proud of the piers so that particularly when you see them at an angle as on the right the brick piers are barely noticeable these are simply large glass oil windows set in rigid metal frames and are clipped onto the brick piers. The treatment of glass and supporting piers here is the exact reverse of Behren’s flank wall at the turbine factory. In Behrens structure the glass membrane was recessed behind the level of the steel girders and battered. Gropius on the other hand very slightly batters back the brick piers. While keeping the window vertical it was observed that the shadow was casted on the edge of the frame that progressively lengthens indicating greater recession towards the top at the same time the metal windows reminded of the big window in the design of Behren’s turbine factory in the way that they are said flash with the main beam of the top but the Behrens’s the big window was part of the steel structure supporting a gable the frame of the window was vertical because it was structural while the concrete infill of the corner was battered back and rounded off while the greater horizontal beam of the roof were cantilevered over the un supported

Figure 16: View of Fagus factory showing uniform glass facade design

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void of the corner. But for Gropius the vertical window frames are not structural but aesthetic giving the impression of a continuous sheet of diaphanous and brilliantly reflective glass an envelope which appears to sit outside the supporting structure and at the end of the façade this insubstantial and unstructured membrane simply wrapped around the corner without any structural explanation in fact concealed cantilevered beams had to be used to support the corners at each floor level. The transparency of these corners was startling innovation. Gropius wanted to not destroy the aesthetics by covering the service room areas by solid façade so he expressed the functions of the service area by using frosted glass were privacy was mandatory and could not be avoided . The glass façade allows the glimpses of staircases and partitioned lavatories and open plan which run on most of the lengths of both facades.

The glass wall was completely uniform along its entire length the glass wall is also carried till the front of the building.

Gropius also designed the staircase in such a way that it could be seen through the glass façade and shared a transparent corner, he dint want to hide the staircase behind any solid façade as it would intrude with the uniformity of the glass façade. The staircase rises up with the enticing functional

Figure 17: View of Fagus factory showing staircase having glass façade

independence.

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The impact of the staircase glass corner is not just the mass but on changing the effects of light to form a contrast with this diaphanous corner. Walking up the staircase provides a sense of sensation that was quite parallel in a building before this .This staircase triggered a completely new approach towards staircase design in dematerialising the structure.

Figure 18: View of Fagus factory showing uniformity of the facade

Gropius treats the brick part of the façade in a more monumental way using channelling to emphasize its thickness. The staircase is extended across the top has a further expression of enveloping glass. Gropius discovered a new sense of space and service the space of the building seems to extend beyond the supporting structure the transparent glass wall seems to form an envelope outside the piers rather than being contained. With building such as this Gropius developed a powerful sense of form an intuitive interpretation of structure which caught the imagination of critics of the cathedrals of the future These are the ways Gropius turned industry building into architecture.

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7.

Fagus Factory

Became The Anticipated Manifesto For Bauhaus: While the other buildings of this industrial complex, built in three construction phases from 1911 to 1925, were completely adjusted to their respective functions. The production hall with its enormous glass windows proposes ideal lighting for shoe-last production, the three-storey main building of the Figure 18: Uniform style of Curtain wall façade in Dessau -Bauhaus. “Fagus” became an icon of

modernity and the transparency it advocated. Its unsupported, fully glassed-in corners symbolised a withdrawal from Industrial Classicism and mark the beginnings of modern skeleton construction. Gropius and Meyer, who had even the construction site regularly documented by one of the most prominent architectural photographers of the time, contributed to the canonisation of their debut work.

The Fagus Factory is today considered as one of the most significant industrial structures of modern architecture. The project is examined as a blue-print of the functional design style that later became associated with the Bauhaus. Also the concept of the curtain wall- the glass facade that Gropius featured in his Bauhaus building in Dessau was put into practice here for the first time.

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8. REFERENCE  For imagesCover page image: https://in.pinterest.com/pin/706361522794976170/?nic_v1=1aIj6fELvlw%2BPAJgMvEXWhAWukKUs 5UC9DY51W363f1vWLxu19WZbScbZfUoOOgdNH

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