Future façadesWalter Gropius, visionary of the Bauhaus and beyond
Walter 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 the evolution and influence of a 20th-century visionary 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.
About the series:Each book in TASCHEN’s Basic Architecture series features:
- an introduction to the life and work of the architect
- the major works in chronological order
- information about the clients, architectural preconditions as well as construction problems and resolutions
- a list of all the selected works and a map indicating the locations of the best and most famous buildings
- approximately 120 illustrations (photographs, sketches, drafts and plans)
