BAUHAUS

WALTER GROPIUS BAUHAUS BUILDING

Arianna Benazzi

Matteo Malavasi

Sonia Morini

5H

LIFE AND WORKSWALTER ADOLPH GROPIUS

WALTER GROPIUS

LIFE▸ Walter Adolph Gropius was born on May 18, 1883 in Berlin

▸ Son of an architect, he studied architecture at the Technical Institutes in Munich between 1903-04 and in Berlin-Charlottenburg between 1905-07

▸ In 1904 he worked in an architectural office in Berlin and he did military service

▸ In 1906, before finishing school, he built his first building, farm labourers' cottages in Pomerania

▸ For a year he travelled in Italy, Spain and England

▸ In 1907 he joined the office of the architect Peter Behrens in Berlin

▸ In 1910 left Behrens, and Gropius developed a clear commitment to and talent for organization and dedication to promoting his ideas on the arts

WALTER GROPIUS

LIFE▸ In 1911, Gropius became a member of the

German Labour League

▸ Gropius was for new building techniques

▸ He was against imitation, snobbery and oversemplification

It was founded in 1907 to connect creative designers with machine production

As the prefabrication of parts and assembly on location

He believed that the function of a product should determine its appearance

WALTER GROPIUS

CAREER AND WORKS▸ Gropius in

collaboration with Adolph Meyer

▸ In April 1919, he became director of

•Fagus Works (1911)

•The Model Office and factory buildings in Cologne (1914)

Some of them were influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright

•The Grand Ducal Saxon School of Arts and Krafts

•The Grand Ducal Saxon Academy of Arts

•The Grand Ducal Saxon School of Arts

Which were immediately

united as

'Staatliches Bauhaus Weimar'

Most decisive step in his career

Fagus Works, Germany 1911

WALTER GROPIUS

CARREER, WORKS AND LAST YEARS▸ In 1925 the Bauhaus moved to Dessau with the

promise of better financial support and an escape from the growing antagonism of the consevative Weimar community

▸ In Dessau Gropius Designed

▸ In 1928 Gropius resigned as director of the Bauhaus to return to practice privately as an architect in Berlin.

▸ In 1937 Gropius arrived in cambridge to become professor of architecture at Harvard University

▸ He died July 5, 1969, Boston, Mass. , U.S.

•The School Building and faculty housing (1925-26)

STORY AND EVENTS

THE BAUHAUS MOVEMENT

BAUHAUS

GENERAL INFORMATION▸ Bauhaus

▸ Gropius wanted to show a new respect for craft and technique in all artistic media and he suggested a return to art and craft with an attitudethat was characteristic of the medieval age

German word meaning "House of building"

School founded in 1919 in Weimar by Walter Gropius to reunite the applied arts and manufacturing, and to reform education

•Had a major impact both in Europe and in the United States

•It was shaped by the 19th and early 20th centuries

BAUHAUS

CHARACTERISTICS▸ The movement:

•It includes fine art, industrial design, graphic design, typography, interior design and architecture

•Included artists like Vassilij Kandinskij, Joseph Albers, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Paul Klee and Johannes Itten, architect Ludwing Mies van der Rohe and designer Marcel Breuer

•Motivations were mixed upwith anxieties about the soullessness of manufacturing and its products, and fears about art's loss of purpose in society

•Unites creativity and manufacturing once again, rejuvenating design for everyday life

•It maintained a stress on intellectual and theoretical pursuits

•It has led to the "Fine arts" being rethought as the "visual arts"

BAUHAUS

CHARACTERISTICS

▸ Central to the school's operation was its original curriculum

▸ It was described by Gropius in the manner of a wheel diagram:

Tdrd•Vorkus (outer ring), a six-month preliminary course, initiated by Johannes Itten, which concentrated on pratical formal analysis;

•two three-year courses, the Forlehre, focused on problems related to form, and Weklehre, a pratical workshop instruction that emphasizes technical craft skills.

•at the centre were courses specialized in building construction that led students to seek practicality and necessity throught technological reproduction.

BAUHAUS

CHARACTERISTICS▸ The basic approach was to

eliminate competitive tendencies and to foster individual creative potential and a sense of community and shared purpose

The school was closed when the Nazis came to power in 1933.

In 1925, the Bauhaus moved to the German industrial town of Dessau, initiating its most fruitful period. Gropius designed a new building for the school, which has

since come to be seen as a landmark of modern, functionalist architecture

It was here that the school finally created a department of architecture

BAUHAUS BUILDING

WALTER GROPIUS

BAUHAUS BUILDING

INTRODUCTION▸ The Bauhaus movement was born in Weimar

in 1919

▸ The Bauhaus building was projected by Walter Gropius in Dessau, an industrial town in central Germany

From 1924, it offered itself up to other towns

The city provided money for the school and also for the Masters's houses. Later, the city remained the owner of the buildings.

The city was chosen by the artists because it could offer new buildings

BAUHAUS BUILDING

INTRODUCTION▸ Gropius' purposes •Unify in a single structure the

artisans' institute and the Art Institute

•Create an art school in which the theoretical and practical lessons are mixed

The two worlds, are traditionally separated

There are laboratories

BAUHAUS BUILDING

ARCHITECTONIC IDEAS▸ Walter Gropius refined

architectonic characteristics that he first put into practice before World War I

•He separated the different parts of the building according to their functions

•He arranged the different wings of the structure asymmetrically

•Presence of row windows •Presence of large glass walls •Series of balconies in the wing of students' dormitory

They are the main elements of the complex

Then there isn't a principal side, and the observer must walk around to see all the characteristics of the building

BAUHAUS BUILDING

THE MODERN CHARACTERISTICS ▸ Rationality and essentiality

▸ Regular volumes

▸ Careful study of the spaces (functionality)

▸ Use of new materials, like glass in curtain wall

▸ Absence of decoration

▸ Study of the design of interior and exterior

▸ Connnection between inside and outside thanks to the glass wall

▸ Natural lightning

BAUHAUS BUILDING

THE THREE WINGS▸ 1• In the workshop wing, the

principal structure, there are the classrooms, the auditorium, the offices and the library

▸ 2• In the second wing there is the event area, a place for meetings and events

▸ 3• The student house is composed of rooms, studios and series of balconies

The two wings are connected by a two-storey bridge where there is the administration

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BAUHAUS BUILDING

IN PARTICULAR▸ The workshop wing is a very large and

airy environment

▸ The exterior is characterize by light tones that create contrasts with the windows' elements that are dark

▸ Inside, different colours accentuate the structure of the building

Thanks to the glass wall: •Show the constructive elements •Creates an impression of lighness

The particulars of the principal side with the sign of the artistic

movement, and the terraces of the rooms' wing

The semplicity of the interiors, characterized by the colours that highlight some structural elements

— Walter Gropius —

"Architecture begins where engineering

ends"