GROPIUS

Walter Gropius, visionary of the Bauhaus and beyondWalter Gropius (1883`1969) set out to build for the future. As the founding director of the Bauhaus, the Berlin-born architect had an inestimable influence on our aesthetic environment, championing a bold new hybrid of light, geometry, and industrial design, as dazzling today as it was a century ago.In this essential architect introduction, we survey Gropius` evolution and influence with 20 of his most significant projects, from the Bauhaus Building in Dessau, Germany, to the Chicago Tribune Tower and Harvard University Graduate Center, completed after Gropius`s exodus to the United States in 1937. We explore his role both as an architectural practitioner, and as a writer and educator, not only as a Bauhaus pioneer, but also, along with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, as a leading proponent of the International Style.Along the way, we see how many of Gropius`s tenets remain benchmarks for architects, designers, and urbanists today. Whether in his emphasis on a functional beauty or his interest in housing and city planning, Gropius astounds in the agility of his thinking as much as in the luminous precision of his work.