GROPIUS, Walter

    (1883-1969)

   Walter Gropius, the leading designer of the Bauhaus School in Dessau, helped to bring graphic design to the forefront of artistic importance. He began his career by opening an architectural office with Adolf Meyer, and the following year he received his first important commission: to build the Fagus Shoe Company factory located in Alfeld an der Leine. Gropius's firm belief that workplace improvements in lighting and ventilation would increase workers' productivity is apparent in the large curtain windows that surround each of the three stories. The building has a steel frame to support the entire structure, thin brick piers to mask the vertical steel framing, and horizontal brick layers that separate each of the stories. The entire exterior wall can be considered a curtain wall in that it supports no weight but simply masks the interior. Thus, in this regard, Gropius's structural innovations reveal him to be a sophisticated engineer.

   Only later did the Bauhaus School offer courses in architecture by professors committed to the establishment of modern architecture in Germany. The Bauhaus Building itself demonstrates these ideals. Built by Gropius in 1925-1926, the Bauhaus Building is a complex of three large cubes, which include classrooms, offices, and a dormitory in the back. It was meant to reveal an "honesty" of materials in its steel frame, which is covered by reinforced concrete punctuated by rows of windows to allow natural light into the studio areas. Raised parapets give the impression of a light structure that contrasts with the perceived "heaviness" of past styles. In 1932, an exhibition of International style architecture, as this European modernism came to be called, was shown at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. This exhibition was instrumental in detaching that style from its perceived German roots and allowing it to transcend national identities so that it would be accepted more widely, as hap-pened in the United States.

   Five years later, Gropius immigrated to the United States to accept a professorship at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design, and in this capacity he was able to hone his modern, utilitarian style of architecture in the United States. His first commission there was for his own house, the Gropius House, built in Lincoln, Massachusetts, in 1937. Inspired by Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye, here Gropius blends industrial materials with native stone and New England-styled clapboards. Cantilevered concrete squares create cubes of space that intersect and are punctured with thin strips of fenestration. This economically produced home set the standard from which modernist domestic architecture was recreated for the next several decades throughout the United States.