L'ARCHITECTURE D'AUJOURD'HUI
February 1950
Walter Gropius et Son Ecole / the Spread of an Idea
Andre Bloc [General Director]
Andre Bloc [General Director]: L'ARCHITECTURE D'AUJOURD'HUI, no. 28, février 1950 [Walter Gropius et Son Ecole / the Spread of an Idea]. Paris: L'architecture D'aujourd'hui, February 1950. Parallel text in French and English. Printed perfect-bound wrappers. [xxxvi] 116 pp. Elaborately designed text and advertisments. Special issue edited under the direction of Walter Gropius and assembled by Paul Rudolph. An Ex-University library copy with a faint rubberstamp to front panel. Wrappers worn and rubbed, with sewn textblock starting to loosen. A good or better copy.
9.25 x 12.25 magazine with 116 pages of editorial content and 36 pages of period advertisments. Special issue edited under the direction of Walter Gropius and assembled by Paul Rudolph.
Contents include:
- La Septieme Exposition de L' Habitation: prefabricated housing by Jean Prouve, and Marseille Housing by Le Corbusier.
- Walter Gropius et Son Ecole / the Spread of an Idea: 49-page special section edited under the direction of Walter Gropius and assembled by Paul Rudolph, with text by Sigfried Giedion and Douglas Haskell; "The Packaged House System" Prefabrication by Konrad Wachsmann and Walter Gropius; the Michael Reese Hospital Plan; Harvard's Graduate Center; Six Moon Hill; residences for Gropius, Harkness, Fletcher Sills, Curry, McMillan, etc.; well illustrated with black and white photographs and plans.
- L'Architecture au "Bauhaus" de Chicago [Architecture at the Institute of Design] : Serge Chermayeff. 19-page article with parallel text in French and English. Includes three illustrated work examples by Robert Brownjohn: photograph of an Exhibition Stand for the Container Corporation of America; typical elevations of small house designed for modular construction with prefabrication units; and photograph of small radio to be used in two different positions. Also a chair by Richard Nickel.
- Blueprint for an Architects Training: Walter Gropius.
- Chinese Art Museum in Shanghai: I. M. Pei.
- Illustrated Problem-Solving at the Graduate School of Design: Cambridge Housing; a Living Art Museum by Victor Lundy; a Residence in the Berkshires; a Summer House in Maine.
- A Statement: Chester Nagel.
- A Prefabricated House: Henry Dreyfuss and Edward Larabee Barnes. Photographed by Julius Shulman.
- House in Austin, Texas: Chester Nagel. "House in Austin [Texas] 32 degrees N. Latitude. The climate very hot with an average annual rainfall of 34 inches. A frost depth of 4 inches for usually short winters. "Where one builds essentially against the heat."
- Cape Cod Residence: Julian Underwood.
- Sarasota Residence: Twitchell and Rudolph.
- Residence near New York: Huson Jackson.
- Residence on Long Island: Breger and Salzman.
- The Peanut: small house by Henry Hill.
Chester [Emil] Nagel [1911- 2007] was among the first architects to bring the International Style to Texas. Born in Fredericksburg in 1911, he studied architecture at the University of Texas, graduating in 1934. From 1935 to 1938 he worked as an architect for the National Parks Service, helping to design facilities for Bastrop and Palo Duro state parks. In 1939 Nagel received a scholarship to study at the Harvard Graduate School of Design where he came in contact with Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer. After receiving his Master's degree from Harvard in 1940 he returned to Austin and, inspired by Gropius' ideas, designed one of the first International Style structures in the state, a house for himself and his wife on Churchill Drive. The Churchill Drive house is extraordinarily faithful to the programmatic style Gropius developed for building in New England. A few material tweaks and the early GSD residential style was adapted to Central Texas. Materials include native Texas buff to cream limestone "laid by cheap labor," 1 x 4 tongued and grooved V. jointed vertical siding, steel casements, built-up roof, and a spiral stair cast by a local foundry at a cost of approximately $130.00. Total cost, exclusive of architect's fee: $6,600. 18,000 cubic feet, completed on May 7th, 1941. The Chester and Lorine Nagel House was posted to the National Register of Historic Places on April 17, 1997 [97000361]. The house remains in remarkably original condition except for the glass enclosure of the sun porch, the removal of the entrance trellis and the addition of a central air conditioning system. The finest example of the International Style in Austin has not been expanded or demolished in the 70 years since its completion.
Born and educated in Germany, Walter Gropius [1883 – 1969] belongs to the select group of architects that massively influenced the international development of modern architecture. As the founding director of the Bauhaus, Gropius made inestimable contributions to his field, to the point that knowing his work is crucial to understanding Modernism. His early buildings, such Fagus Boot-Last Factory and the Bauhaus Building in Dessau, with their use of glass and industrial features, are still indispensable points of reference. After his emigration to the United States, he influenced the education of architects there and became, along with Mies van der Rohe, a leading proponent of the International Style.
"Only work which is the product of inner compulsion can have spiritual meaning." -- Walter Gropius
American industrial, cultural and educational ambassadors were eager to embrace the refugees fleeing the coming storm in Europe. Joseph Hudnut invited Walter Gropius to join the Harvard Graduate School of Design, the Association of Arts and Industries financed the New Bauahuas in Chicago under Moholy-Nagy, Josef and Anni Albers helped developed the experimental teachings at Black Mountain College in Asheville, North Carolina, Mies van der Rohe assumed leadership of the Architecture program at the Armour Institute, Illinois Institute of Technology, and Alfred Barr and the Museum of Modern Art hosted art, architecture and design exhibitions devoted to the Bauhaus ideas.
The underlying idea Bauhaus formulated by Gropius, was to create a new unity of crafts, art and technology. The intention was to offer the right environment for the realization of the Gesamtkunstwerk [total work of art]. To achieve this goal, students needed a school with an interdisciplinary and international orientation. The Bauhaus curriculum offered a unique combination of research, teaching and practice that was unequalled by rival academies and schools of applied art. This educational paradigm was widely embraced by institutions in the United States trying to emerge from the depths of the Great Depression.
The Harvard Graduate School of Design is widely regarded as the cradle of American modern architecture. Professor Joseph Hudnut created the GSD by uniting the three formerly separate programs of architecture, landscape architecture, and city planning in 1935. He got rid of antique statuary, replaced mullioned windows with plate glass, and hired Walter Gropius to head the architecture program.
During his tenure at Harvard—from 1937 to 1952—Gropius oversaw the end of the academic French Beaux-Arts method of educating architects. Gropius’s philosophy placed an emphasis on industrial materials and technology, functionality, collaboration among different professions, and a complete rejection of historical precedent.
Assisted by Bauhaus colleague Marcel Breuer, Gropius educated a generation of architects who radically altered the landscape of postwar America, including Chester Nagle, Edward Larrabee Barnes, Garrett Eckbo, Lawrence Halprin, Dan Kiley, Philip Johnson, Eliot Noyes, I.M. Pei, Paul Rudolph, Edward Durell Stone, and many others.