Gropius, Walter (1883–1969)
November 6, 2009 | In: Architectural History
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Emerging from his role as an educator at the Bauhaus, Walter Gropius had tremendous influence on generations of students and was a profound figure in the modern movement. A consummate collaborator, his rational architecture was less about the object and more about social responsibilities and industrial standardization.
Starting his life in Germany, Gropius studied architecture at the Technische Hochschule in Berlin and Munich, finishing in 1907. That same year he began working for Peter Behrens, and three years later he left to start his own practice. His first significant commission, assisted by Adolf Meyer, was the façade for the Fagus factory in 1911. Predating many modernist buildings, the factory found an appropriate industrial vocabulary with clear modern intentions. Various house projects followed, along with the design of the industrial buildings for the Cologne Exhibition of the Deutsche Werkbund Congress.
Combining the Higher Institute of Fine Arts and the School of Applied Arts, the Bauhaus was formed in 1919 with Gropius as its director. He emigrated to Britain and then the United States in the mid-1930s, when he was summoned to head the Graduate School of Architecture at Harvard. His architectural practice often collaborated with Marcel Breuer and he was a founding member of the firm The Architect’s Collaborative (TAC). Other projects of note, in which he had primary responsibility, include the United States Embassy in Athens (1956) and a skyscraper for Grand Central Station, New York City (1960) (Berdini, 1985; Fitch, 1960; Isaacs, 1991).
Drawings by Gropius reveal the rational clarity and functionalist approach of modernism (Tzonis and Nerdinger, 1990). His drawings and sketches were most often graphite on paper, primarily employing the conventions of plan, section, elevation, and axonometric. This sketch is a design for the Lovant Residence in Arlington, Vermont (1942). Although the project was never constructed, the program specified a small house equipped with viewing windows on a ninety-acre site (Tzonis and Nerdinger, 1990).
This plan shows circulation paths sketched in red. Obviously concerned about the material thickness of walls, Gropius used poché to add weight to structural walls. He also differentiated the floor surfaces by shading certain areas and crosshatching others. These visual indicators help to emphasize that the house was to be built using local materials, fieldstone, and wood. The careful control of proportion and the consideration for spatial relationships indicate that Gropius used this sketch for concentrated and deliberate thinking.
The red paths are the most distinctive part of this sketch. Gropius was visually ‘walking’ his pencil through the house, checking the efficiency and flow of the circulation. The circulation in this small house seems particularly chaotic in the entry vestibule, where all of the paths intersect. In later versions of the house, Gropius eliminated the ‘L’ of the kitchen and designed it as a galley space, thus simplifying the options for circulation. The patterns of movement have been separated between public and private. For example, the lines from the maid’s room through the kitchen to the dining table are separated from the entry, living, and guest toilet. To further support this interpretation, a thin line starts
on the kitchen counter and ends with an arrow on the dining table (additionally indicated by the only measurement on the sketch, ten feet). Most lines consist of single weight; conversely, the circulation paths have been sketched over as if he was walking the possible routes several times. Gropius’ reputation for efficiency would support a theory that he was concerned with the economical delivery of food and the distances of travel through the space.
