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Biography of Walter GropiusName: Walter GropiusBirth Date: May 18, 1883 Death Date: 1969 Place of Birth: Berlin, Germany Nationality: German, American Gender: Male Occupations: architect, educator, designer Walter Gropius The German-American architect, educator, and designer Walter Gropius (1883-1969) was director of the famed Bauhaus in Germany from 1919 to 1928 and served as the chair of architecture at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design from 1938 to 1952.Walter Gropius was born in Berlin on May 18, 1883. Although he studied architecture in Berlin and Munich (1903-1907), he received no degree. He then went to work in Berlin for Peter Behrens, one of several German architects who was influenced by the British Arts and Crafts movement and who attempted to go further by adapting good design to machine production.In 1910 Gropius set up practice with Adolf Meyer. They designed the Fagus Works in Alfeld an der Leine (1911) and the office building at the Werkbund Exhibition in Cologne (1914), using a combination of masonry and steel construction, from which, in some areas, the external glass sheathing was hung. The plan of the Cologne building was axially designed in …showed first 150 words…
…showed last 150 words…a project for the Boston Back Bay Center (1953), which was not carried out; and designed the U.S. Embassy in Athens (1960) and Baghdad University in Iraq (begun 1962 but incomplete as of 1971).Gropius also designed locomotives and railroad sleeping cars (1913-1914), the Adler automobile (1930), and a host of everyday products. He believed in "the common citizenship of all creative work." Associated Organizations Further Reading Works on Gropius include Sigfried Giedion, Walter Gropius: Work and Teamwork (1954); Gilbert Herbert, The Synthetic Vision of Walter Gropius (1959); and J. M. Fitch, Walter Gropius (1960). Studies of the Bauhaus are L. Hirshfeld-Mack, The Bauhaus (1963), and Hans M. Wingler, Bauhaus (1969), which is the most detailed and comprehensive study. For bibliographies of Gropius's works see American Association of Architectural Bibliographers, Walter Gropius: A Bibliography, prepared by Caroline Shillaber (1965), and William B. O'Neal, Walter Gropius (1966).Isaacs, Reginald R., Gropius: an illustrated biography of the creator of the Bauhaus, Boston: Little, Brown, 1991. |