Walter Gropius (Masters of World Architecture) - Hardcover

Fitch, James Marston

9780807601303: Walter Gropius (Masters of World Architecture)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0807601306 ISBN 13: 9780807601303

Publisher: George Braziller, 1960

Dust jacket notes: "Though the international fame of Walter Gropius rests upon a distinguished career in architecture at every level - as practitioner, educator and theoretician - his most famous creation was undoubtedly the Bauhaus of pre-Hitler Germany. In this school, whose curriculum and buildings alike were designed by him, Gropius has given us a completely integrated educational response to the problems created for design by modern industrialism. Deriving from half a century of speculation which runs from the Englishmen Ruskin and Morris to the German Werkbund, Gropius' educational theories embody the best features of both the academy and the craft school, combining theoretical and practical training at a very high level. The Bauhaus, as the vital expression of this philosophy, was perhaps the most important single influence in the international design world in the decades between the wars. An outspoken critic of the social aspects of architecture, housing and city planning, as well as a consistent theoretician, Gropius was always compelled to examine the larger organism of which the individual building was just a cell. As Gropius himself put it: 'My idea of the architect as the coordinator - whose business is to unify the various formal, technical, social and economic problems that arise in connection with building - inevitably led me on, step by step, from study of the function of the house to that of the street; from the street to the town; and finally to the still vaster implications of regional and national planning.' His architecture, like his life, has been rational, grave and responsible. Marked by its explicit social commitment, his entire career as a designer has been aimed at the creation of what he has called a 'supra-personal' language of design...."

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About the Author:

Martica Sawin is an art historian and critic. She lives in New York City.

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