Walter Adolph Gropius, FAIA

Year Awarded: 1959
Born: May 18, 1883; Berlin, Germany
Died: 1969; Boston

Quote
The ultimate aim of all creative activity is a building!


Projects
• 1966: John F. Kennedy Federal Building, Boston
• 1963: Pan Am Building (now the MetLife Building), New York City
• 1961: Wayland High School, Wayland, Mass.
• 1960: University of Baghdad
• 1957: Interbau Apartment blocks, Hansaviertel Berlin, Germany
• 1950: Harvard Graduate Center, Cambridge, Mass.
• 1937: Gropius House, Lincoln, Mass.
• 1925: Bauhaus, Dessau, Germany
• 1911: Fagus Works, Alfeld an der Leine, Germany


Biography
Walter Gropius was the third son of an architect and building consultant to the German government. He studied architecture in Munich and Berlin. In 1910, he went to work for Peter Behrens; in 1913 he and Adolph Meyer set up their own practice.

Gropius became the chairman of the Working Council for Art in early 1919 and was named director of the Grand Ducal School of Fine Arts of Saxony in Weimar, which merged with the former School of Arts and Crafts. In April, the new institution was officially opened under the name State Bauhaus Weimar. Gropius’ mission in the school was to develop a new architectural style to reflect the beginning of a new age that he believed had commenced with the end of World War I. He perceived the arts as an integrated discipline and the school was designed around that concept. Because Gropius sought to democratize the arts and architecture, he encouraged his students to design with the goals of simplicity, functionality, and innovation partnered with the concepts of economy and mass production.

In 1934, as the Nazi Party began to increase in power, Gropius left Germany and settled briefly in England. In 1937 he moved to Massachusetts, taking a teaching position at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. While in Cambridge, Gropius founded The Architects’ Collaborative (TAC).

TAC’s foundational philosophy reflected Gropius’s own—a driving belief in both the social responsibility of architecture and teamwork. TAC projects were designed via the input of a number of architects, with one architect serving as partner in charge to lead the team and act the group’s face to the client.