THE ARCHITECTS COLLABORATIVE 1945 - 1965
Walter Gropius and Sarah P. Harkness [Editors]
Walter Gropius and Sarah P. Harkness [Editors]: THE ARCHITECTS COLLABORATIVE 1945 - 1965. Teufen: Arthur Niggli Ltd., [1966]. First edition. Text in English and German. Oblong quarto. Blue cloth decorated in white. Printed dust jacket. 300 pp. 312 black and white photographs, plans and diagrams. 4 color photographs. Book design and typography by Josef Müller-Brockmann. Textblock edges lightly dusted. Blue jacket lightly sun faded at spine, mild edge wear including a couple of tiny, closed tears. A lovely copy of the definitive volume on TAC: a nearly fine copy in a very good or better dust jacket.
11.5 x 9 hardcover book with 300 pages and 312 black and white photographs, plans and diagrams, and 4 color photographs. Edited by Walter Gropius and Sarah P. Harkness, with contributions from Jean B. Fletcher, Norman C. Fletcher, John C. Harkness, , Louis A. McMillen, and Benjamin Thompson.
Includes extensive documentation and biographic reminiscences of TAC projects, including Six Moon Hill; Lexington, MA; 1947-1950; Five Fields; Lexington, MA; 1951-1959; Harvard Graduate Center; Cambridge, MA; 1949 University of Baghdad; Baghdad, Iraq; 1957-1960; Pan-American World Airways Building; New York City; 1958-1963 (with Emery Roth & Sons); Wayland High School; Wayland, MA; 1960; John Fitzgerald Kennedy Office Building; Boston, MA; 1961; Parkside Elementary School; Columbus, IN; 1962 and others.
"Only work which is the product of inner compulsion can have spiritual meaning." -- Walter Gropius
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.
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 Edward Larrabee Barnes, Garrett Eckbo, Lawrence Halprin, Dan Kiley, Philip Johnson, Eliot Noyes, I.M. Pei, Paul Rudolph, Edward Durell Stone, and many others.
Walter Gropius formed The Architects' Collaborative (TAC) seven younger architects in 1945 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The philosophy of Collaboration reflected Gropius' central preoccupation with the social responsibilities of architecture.
At TAC an entire group of architects had their input on a project, rather than putting an emphasis on individualism. There would be a "partner-in-charge," who would meet with clients and have final decision-making authority. Originally, each of the eight partners would hold weekly meetings on a Thursday to discuss their projects and be open to design input and ideas. However, as the firm grew larger there were many more people on a team and it was more difficult to consolidate into one group. Therefore, many other "groups" of architects within the firm were formed and carried out the same original objective.
TAC has been a notable landmark in the history of postwar modernism. For the most part the firm functioned as a team rather than on an individual basis, which was considered a unique method of architectural practice, which reflected Gropius' philosophy of working collaboratively with others when he was a Bauhaus instructor in Germany prior to TAC. In later years, TAC was known as one of the first architects to design environmentally "green" buildings starting in the early 1980s. Two of the original eight founders, Norman Fletcher and John "Chip" Harkness stayed with TAC for its entire 50 year existence.
“As with most graphic designers that can be classified as part of the Swiss International Style, Joseph Müller-Brockmann (Switzerland 1914 – 1996) was influenced by the ideas of several different design and art movements including Constructivism, De Stijl, Suprematism and the Bauhaus. He is perhaps the most well-known Swiss designer and his name is probably the most easily recognized when talking about the period. He was born and raised in Switzerland and by the age of 43 he became a teacher at the Zurich school of arts and crafts.
“Perhaps his most decisive work was done for the Zurich Town Hall as poster advertisements for its theater productions. He published several books, including The Graphic Artist and His Problems and Grid Systems in Graphic Design. These books provide an in-depth analysis of his work practices and philosophies, and provide an excellent foundation for young graphic designers wishing to learn more about the profession. He spent most of his life working and teaching, even into the early 1990s when he toured the US and Canada speaking about his work. He died in Zurich in 1996. — Kerry Williams Purcell
Excerpted from Yvonne Schwemer-Scheddin's "A Conversation with Josef Müller-Brockmann," Eye, Winter, 1995: Josef Müller-Brockmann . . . "began his career as an apprentice to the designer and advertising consultant Walter Diggelman before, in 1936, establishing his own Zurich studio specialising in graphics, exhibition design and photography. By the 1950s he was established as the leading practitioner and theorist of the Swiss Style, which sought a universal graphic expression through a grid-based design purged of extraneous illustration and subjective feeling . . . . Müller-Brockmann was founder and, from 1958 to 1965, co-editor of the trilingual journal Neue Grafik (New Graphic Design) which spread the principles of Swiss design internationally. He was professor of graphic design at the Kunstgewerbeschule, Zurich from 1957 to 1960 and the Hochschule fur Gestaltung, Ulm from 1963. From 1967 he was European design consultant for IBM."