Gropius, Walter

The first female architecture student to study under Walter Gropius at the Harvard School of Design in the Post World War II era, Daphne Bugbee Jones was an accomplished architect who brought the principles of the Bauhaus and Modernist architecture to the state of Montana in America's Inland Northwest. Along with her husband, noted environmental philosopher Henry Bugbee, Bugbee Jones merged her commitment to Modernist design, social activism, and the preservation of wilderness in the urban interphase zone around the city of Missoula.

The life of the german architect Walter Gropius, full of adversities (a difficult childhood, the incapacity of drawing, the first World War, its consequences, the Third Reich against his Bauhaus educational project, etc.), was led by effort and willpower to the subsequent well-known fame achieved through his work and theory in the field of architeture.

Unlike many other publications on Nazi culture, this book is not primarily about what has been called "the Nazification of the arts," based upon state-supported use of the arts  for propaganda, a curtailment of freedom in art criticism, and the political and legal Gleichschaltung, "the forcing into conformity" under a hierarchical, dictatorial leadership (Führerprinzip) of all aspects of the various branches of national and local government, the civil service, education, public finance, business, the professions, and the arts.  To complement earlier studies of Gleichschaltung, the essays in this anthology explore the underlying beliefs of the Nazi racist state as they were developed and propagated in various fields of artistic activity.

In “Dreams of Utopia,” the penultimate chapter of The Ethical Function of Architecture, Karsten Harries quotes a familiar passage drafted by Walter Gropius in 1919 as a statement of modernity’s architectural faith. In the manner that renders his work both so refreshing and so provocative, Harries lifts Gropius’s statement out of the narrower framework of its historical context at the origins of the Bauhaus, and exploits it instead as a means of questioning the aspirations of modernity’s architecture more broadly.

This essay returns to this passage, to its assessment by Harries, and to a comparable appraisal offered by Colin Rowe in 1978, with a view to examining more closely architecture’s purported capacities as an expression of faith. It measures modernity’s claims against an older assessment, once equally familiar, offered by the author of the biblical epistle to the Hebrews—this too articulated in the vocabulary of architecture, but drawing strikingly different conclusions.

Modernist Cultures 12.3 (2017): 331–344. This essay reconsiders Reyner Banham's classic study of early twentieth-century architecture and design, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age, originally published in 1960. Banham surveyed the architecture, design, and visual arts of the 'first machine age', characterized by industrial production and motorized transportation, from a self-consciously thematized perspective within the 'second machine age', populated by expendable consumer technologies and images. This revisionist perspective enabled Banham to challenge long-standing myths propagated by the dominant figures of the modern movement. In his polemical emphasis on the contingency and plurality of that which had empirically transpired in first machine age, Banham rejected the reduction of the messy history of the modern movement to the victory of a putative 'international style'. Banham reasserted the intimate connection of architectural modernism with the avant-garde artistic movements of the 1910s and 20s, emphasizing particularly the most radical ones such as expressionism, futurism, and dadaism.

Although Lothar Schreyer, who had some initial theatrical experience at Der Sturm in Berlin, first headed up the Bauhaus stage workshop, the ideas and concepts of the workshop have been commonly associated with the other master of the workshop, Oskar Schlemmer. Schreyer left the Bauhaus due to discord between his work and the orientation of the Bauhaus under the direction of the first director Gropius. There is, however, an apparent influence of Schreyer in the theatrical concepts that Gropius stated several times, even after Schreyer’s resignation. On the other hand, Gropius also had some ideas, which were not similar to Schreyer’s, but closer to those of Schlemmer. In this paper, the characteristics of each master’s theatrical concept are examined and compared with that of Gropius. Schreyer’s theater can be defined as “a function to transmit implications” and Schlemmer’s as the “internalization of principles”. With these classifications, it becomes possible to review the workshop in its early years, and demonstrate that inconsistency between Schreyer and the Bauhaus existed from the beginning. Yet, it is also true that while Schreyer left the Bauhaus, his concepts and ideas did not completely disappear: even in Schlemmer's theatrical concept, the influence of Schreyer can still be found.

Utopian visions and diagrams have engaged in a multitude of relationships. For example, a utopian narrative can be conceived as a diagram, or with the aid of diagrams, and understood through diagrammatic (re) annotation. This notion is explored through an interpretation of Thomas More’s Utopia and Andrea Branzi’s Agronica. Both schemes address various structural conditions through diagrammatic operations. In More’s scheme the channel that separates Utopia from the mainland, dug by its putative founder King Abraxas, inscribes a circular boundary, reiterated in the city walls and moat; it is resonant with contemporaneous rota and volvelle schemata. Conversely, Andrea Branzi’s “mirror simulator” multiplies Agronica’s centrifugal grid to infinity, negating the “outside,” and is evocative of pervasive virtual networks.

Un proyecto reunió en Buenos Aires a Amancio Williams con Walter Gropius. A fines de los 60´s fueron convocados por el gobierno de la República Federal de Alemania, para proyectar en conjunto la sede de su Embajada en Buenos Aires.
Durante el gobierno de Arturo Illia (1963-1966) mediante una ley se habilitó el canje de un palacete que poseía la Embajada de Alemania en Buenos Aires, a cambio de una porción del terreno de la Plaza Alemania en el barrio de Palermo, para dar lugar a la construcción de una nueva residencia para el embajador en Argentina. En 1964, en visita al país, el presidente de la República Federal de Alemania, Heinrich Lübcke, colocó la piedra fundamental del futuro edificio.
En diciembre de 1968, con 85 años de edad, Gropius viajó a Buenos Aires acompañado por un socio de The Architects Collaborative (TAC), Alexander Cvijanovic, para trabajar una semana en el estudio de Williams; la colaboración continuó luego a la distancia, intercambiando correspondencia. Para entonces la situación argentina había cambiado, un golpe militar había derrocado al presidente Illia y tanto desde el gobierno municipal como desde el Estado nacional se negó la cesión del terreno adjudicado, proponiendo cambiarlo por otro.
Con un proceso de trabajo cargado de incertidumbres, marchas y contramarchas (involucró a arquitectos argentinos, alemanes y norteamericanos, cuatro presidentes de Argentina, dos de la República Federal Alemana, dos embajadores de ese país, más una importante cantidad de personalidades de la cultura y la política de ambas partes), el episodio estuvo cruzado por múltiples tensiones y permite revisar el estado de situación hacia el final de la larga década del sesenta: la cultura arquitectónica, los conflictos urbanos, la inestabilidad política argentina y la diplomacia alemana de la guerra fría, se concentraron en una plaza de la ciudad de Buenos Aires.

The Bauhaus show at the MoMA in 1938 was the first comprehensive exhibition of the Bauhaus. The political situation caused considerable obstacles for the organizers of the 1938 MoMA exhibition, making loans difficult and putting former Bauhauslers who were still in Germany at risk, but it does not comprehensively explain the divided reception of the show. What also needs to be taken into consideration is a substantial misunderstanding between the intentions of Gropius and his friends involved in the exhibition’s planning, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the New York audience who questioned the relevance of the Bauhaus in the US at that moment.

In the 1920s and 1930s several proposals for a new form of theatrical architecture were conceived. Though unrealized, these Utopian designs engendered an idealized ambition for dramatic reform and have come to represent significant developments within Modernist theatre architecture. These include the visions of Vsevolod Meyerhold (1874–1940), Walter Gropius (1883–1969), and Frederick Kiesler (1890–1965). Nevertheless, their incomplete status dictates that the dramaturgical potential of these idealized ventures remains elusive in the absence of a ‘complete’ artefact.

This thesis is an investigation of these Utopian theatres through the practice of computer-based 3D visualization. Approached as a research methodology, the structural and dramaturgical implications of these lost theatres are examined through the process of – albeit virtual – ‘realization’. However, the use of this technology to articulate and conduct cultural heritage research has been deemed a problematic enterprise within the academy. Since its inception in the late 1980s, heritage visualization has been consistently berated for its susceptibility to subjective coefficients and the apparent absence of a scholarly narrative.

In response to this methodological concern, this project’s research strategy is drawn from the recommendations of the London Charter 20091. First drafted in 2006, the London Charter is an initiative designed to enhance the academic validity and accessibility of visualization-based research and practice under the wider remit of cultural heritage. Concerned with intellectual transparency and accessibility, it outlines the requirements for academic scrutiny and acceptance. Notably this extends to an acknowledgement of ‘all information, digital and non-digital, considered during, or directly influencing, the creation of computer-based visualization outcomes’ [The London Charter 2009: 7].

Consequently, the aim of this thesis is to examine the implications of intellectual transparency for heritage visualization. The written component confronts this aim through an examination of computer-based 3D visualization as a research methodology: this includes possible strategies for knowledge representation and citation methods. Observations from this review support a wider consideration of, what are termed here, ‘procedural coefficients’ and their role in piecing together possible ‘pasts’ in support of a cohesive visualization.

This study investigates the roots of interdisciplinary architectural and design education and methodology in Europe and the United States during the first half of the twentieth century. In particular this thesis is concerned with the establishment of the principles of a universal visual language within this context. Walter Gropius' (1883-1969) efforts to propagate a universal understanding of architecture, art and design at the Bauhaus is a central focus of this study along with the use of a universal visual language to facilitate such an ideal. This thesis argues that the instigation of the Bauhaus preliminary course, the Vorkurs, developed by Johannes Itten (1888–1967) and matured by Bauhaüslers Lázsló Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946) and Josef Albers (1888-1976) offered vitality, integrity, creativity and longevity to Bauhaus pedagogy and posits that the beliefs and practices of the Vorkurs contributed significantly to the translation of European modern design education in the United States. Although Bauhaus pedagogical translations were refuted by some and misunderstood by others in the wholly different economic context of the United States, this study proposes that the translations of the Vorkurs methodology, by the émigré Bauhaüslers, Moholy-Nagy at the New Bauhaus in Chicago, Albers at Black Mountain College and Yale and Gropius at Harvard contributed to the codification of modern twentieth-century design education, and as such continues to offer relevance in current architectural and design pedagogical environments.

Ethics and aesthetics share a common property: they both cannot be taught. This paper argues that this was a common thesis that was individually suggested by two important figures of mid-war Germany, that most probably never met: the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein and the architect Walter Gropius. In order to test this thesis, two texts of the time are cross-examined the 'Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus' (1918) and the 'Manifesto and Program of the School of Bauhaus' (1919).
This paper examines the ethical meaning of Gropius words that explicitly say that 'art cannot be taught' through the way that Wittgenstein viewed ethics (and aesthetics) in his early philosophy. The paper also suggests that, despite their shared view on the  impossibility of teaching, both Wittgenstein and Gropius had in mind a similar way that allows the cultivation of ethics and aesthetics. The philosopher called this: 'showing'; while the architect realized it in the 'workshops of the craft', making them the core of the education of Bauhaus.

H ηθική και η αισθητική έχουν μια κοινή ιδιότητα: και οι δυο δεν μπορούν να διδαχθούν. 'Η τουλάχιστον αυτό ισχυρίζεται αυτή η εισήγηση ότι διατυπώθηκε κατά τη διάρκεια το μεσοπολέμου στη Γερμανία από τον φιλόσοφο Ludwig Wittgenstein και τον αρχιτέκτονα Walter Gropius. Υπό αυτή την αρχική θέση θα συνεξεταστούν δύο σύγχρονα μεταξύ τους κείμενα το Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1918) και το Ιδρυτικό Κείμενο της Σχολής του Bauhaus (1919).
Η παρούσα εισήγηση διερευνά το ηθικό νόημα της διατύπωσης του Gropius ότι 'η τέχνη δεν διδάσκεται' υπό το πρίσμα της ηθικής φιλοσοφίας του Wittgenstein. Επίσης επιχειρεί την ανάλυση ενός διανοητικού εργαλείου το οποίο υποστηρίζεται ότι είναι κοινό ανάμεσα στον Wittgenstein και τον Gropius, το οποίο μπορεί να επιτρέψει την καλλιέργεια της ηθικής και της αισθητικής. Το εργαλείο αυτό ο φιλόσοφος το ονόμασε 'δείξη,' το ανάλογο του οποίου ο αρχιτέκτονας το υλοποίησε στα εργαστήρια των τεχνών, δίνοντάς τους κεντρικό ρόλο στην εκπαιδευτική διαδικασία του Bauhaus.

In the early 1960s, the Saudi Ministry of Defense and Aviation began planning for an air terminal that was urgently required to accommodate the hundreds of thousands of Hajj pilgrims that arrived yearly. Approximately five hundred thousand pilgrims were expected to arrive in 1975, and that number was certain to increase exponentially over the years. The creation of a suitable facility was thus an absolute necessity. This article investigates how designers successfully addressed the issue of creating such a mammoth terminal without adopting the International Style of architecture, then virtually ubiquitous. It begins by outlining the development of the International Style and mentions the concerns of its critics. It then examines how the developers of the Hajj Terminal addressed these concerns by adopting a neo-Vernacular approach to create a stunningly beautiful edifice which, while reflecting traditional vernacular precedents in its tent-shaped design, was also to become the world's most immense fabric structure enclosing the world's largest covered space. Today, the Hajj Terminal encompasses an area greater than the international airports of New York, Chicago and Paris combined. Approximately two million pilgrims pass through the terminal every year, making it the center of the biggest airlift in the world during the pilgrimage season.

This paper argues that the writings of cultural-theorist Jean Baudrillard from the late 1960s and early 1970s provided an important contribution to twentieth-century Design Theory. Baudrillard’s theory of consumer society was informed by a critical engagement with themes that preoccupied twentieth-century design practice and theory. Rejecting the designer’s testimony as evidence, Baudrillard insisted that design be understood within the broader sociological context of consumer society. Towards the close of the 1960s, as the universalist project of Functionalism was attacked by various factions, Baudrillard uniquely argued that Functionalism had not simply failed to establish a singular mode of design in opposition to the multiplicity of fashion; rather Functionalism was fashion’s progenitor and perfect exemplar.

ABSTRACT: The article argues that the present dominance of the modernist design idiom, and the general aesthetic inferiority of existing non-modernist stylistic alternatives, is a consequence of the fact that design schools have for decades banished non-modernist visual idioms from their curricula. The author discusses original arguments for the single-style modernist regime of contemporary design schools, and contends that the modernist vision of a single unified style, which prompted the banishment, was rooted in a backward-looking effort to imitate the aesthetic unity of pre-industrial, aristocratic epochs. Against the received view of modernism as an expression of modernity, the author argues that the modernists were, on the contrary, intent on suppressing the key novel feature of the modern time: its pluralism in general and its aesthetic diversity in particular. It is further asserted that the design philosophy behind the modernist regime was largely self-serving, aimed at securing the modernists an educational and aesthetic monopoly. The author pleads for transforming the modernist design education into a modern one, where a pluralism of aesthetic idioms and positions replaces the current one-style-fits-all approach.

Obgleich kaum als kollektive Gruppe untersucht bilden die Architekten zweifellos eine zentrale historische (funktionale) Elitenformation der frühen, durch den Wiederaufbau geprägten Bundesrepublik. Relevant sind nicht nur die Anpassungsleistungen der Architekten über den Systembruch hinweg, sondern deren politisch-sozial Funktion. Insbesondere ist zu fragen, inwieweit die progressiven Planungsutopien der 1920er Jahre und die entfesselten Gestaltungsmacht der Architekten im Dienst des NS im Kontext der frühen Bundesrepublik spürbar blieben. Daran anschließend stellt sich die generellere Frage nach der Gestaltung des Sozialen durch Städtebau und Architektur in der Bundesrepublik und damit auch der Legitimität der frühen Bundesrepublik. Dieser Artikel nimmt diese Fragen in den Blick, indem er Architekten in der frühen Bundesrepublik Deutschland und in der Volksrepublik Polen vergleicht.

En abril de 1919, en la ciudad de Weimar, Alemania, bajo la dirección del arquitecto Walter Gropius, inicia labores académicas la Staatliches Bauhaus (Casa Estatal de Construcción), bajo la convicción de fusionar arquitectura, bellas artes y artes aplicadas, eliminando las barreras y jerarquías que entre ellas se establecían, todo esto alcanzado bajo un espacio integrador. Esta nueva escuela establece, a través de una formación en artes, diseño y arquitectura, las bases, así como un modelo a seguir, para la enseñanza de estas disciplinas, en futuras escuelas y programas en el mundo. Para la Bauhaus, la arquitectura sería esa práctica en la que confluyen distintas disciplinas, proponiendo el edificio como punto de encuentro de estas prácticas y su obra. A través de el análisis de tres icónicas obras asociadas a esta escuela, se busca reconocer este elemento fundamental de la arquitectura, como protagonista de este legado, a cien años de fundación.

«Forse, si potrebbe dire che alcuni dei con­flitti ideo­lo­gici che ani­mano le pole­mi­che di oggi si svol­gono tra i devoti discen­denti del tempo e gli abi­tanti acca­niti dello spa­zio». Tale osser­va­zione di Michel Fou­cault – tratta da una con­fe­renza tenuta a Tunisi nel 1967 su un’idea di uso del tempo e degli spazi in un’ottica fran­cese, euro­pea e occi­den­tale – è stata ripor­tata alla nostra atten­zione, in un recente incon­tro all’Università La Sapienza di Roma, da Ettore Janu­lardo, raf­fi­nato sto­rico dell’arte e dell’architettura, che rivolge uno sguardo sen­si­bile all’immagine e all’immaginario delle città. A que­ste tema­ti­che, Janu­lardo ha dedi­cato nume­rosi scritti, tra cui ricor­diamo il volume L’image de la ville dans l’architecture, la pein­ture et la nar­ra­tion ita­lienne de l’entre deux-guerres (2014).
Riletta ora, la rifles­sione di Fou­cault può essere una delle chiavi inter­pre­ta­tive dell’odierno sce­na­rio inter­na­zio­nale, segnato da una netta con­trap­po­si­zione tra l’apparenza meta­fi­sica di un certo inte­gra­li­smo orien­tale, radi­cato in una dimen­sione poten­zial­mente legata al tempo, e un pen­siero che cerca di con­fron­tarsi, invece, con i ter­ri­tori e l’orizzontalità delle nostre esi­stenze, pro­vando ad «aggiu­stare la mira» sul rap­porto di con­vi­venza con gli altri. «Ragio­nare sugli spazi abi­ta­tivi delle nostre società e città, signi­fica deci­dere se l’architettura deve avere un ruolo civile, ter­reno, umano o se dev’essere uni­ca­mente con­ce­pita in chiave tota­li­ta­ria», ci dice Janu­lardo. Par­tendo dalla rifles­sione di Fou­cault, abbiamo dia­lo­gato sull’archeologia del moderno in Iraq e sulle nuove pos­si­bili visioni di quei tumul­tuosi squarci urbani che la Siria – ostag­gio della guerra civile e dello Stato Isla­mico – ci con­se­gna oggi come monito e come dolo­rosa ere­dità di un pas­sato da ricomporre.

Certificate of my online participation in the International Webinar organised by the Vishwaneedam Center for Asian Blossoming, Puducherry and Chennai on 3rd July 2022 from 05:00 to 6:30 p.m. IST. The topic of the International Webinar was: ‘Design Thinking and Alternative Futures’.