THE NEW ARCHITECTURE AND THE BAUHAUS
Walter Gropius
Walter Gropius: THE NEW ARCHITECTURE AND THE BAUHAUS. London: Faber and Faber, 1956. Third impression. Octavo. Black cloth stamped in white. Photographically printed dust jacket. 80 pp. 16 black and white plates. Jacket with light wear to edges and spine joints, with a small tear and chip to the spine crown. The jacket reproduces the original 1935 Laszlo Moholy-Nagy design; an example of Moholy's Rhodoid technique: photographing a composition through glass or other transparent material to catch the shadow cast on the background. A near fine copy in a very good [non-price-clipped] example of the Moholy-Nagy dust jacket.
5.75 x 8.25 book with 80 glossy pages, including 16 full-pages black and white photographs. Introduction by Frank Pick. This is the book where Gropius attempted to spell out his theories of the new architecture he had incubated and formalized while Director of the Bauhaus in Weimar and Dessau from 1919 to 1928.
Contents:
Preface by Frank Pick
The New Architecture & the Bauhaus
Standardization
Rationalization
The Bauhaus:
Preparartory instruction
Practical & formal instruction
Structural instruction
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.
Laszlo Moholy-Nagy developed his Rhodoid technique -- photographing compositions through glass or other transparent material -- to catch the background cast of his manipulated shadows. This design technique came out of Moholy's experiments with light as a new form of vision: "Formerly the painter impressed his vision on his age; today it is the photographer."
Moholy believed the camera -- by extending the eye's capability and through its manipulation of light -- could alter traditional perceptual habits.
"Moholy was one of the first to leave petrified traditions in photography and tread new paths by extending photographic possibilities both practically and theoretically. He arrived at lasting results in the photogram and in photo-montage at a time when these forms were almost unknown." — Franz Roh