15 RASSEGNA
WALTER GROPIUS 1907 - 1934
Vittorio Gregotti [Direttore responsabile]
Vittorio Gregotti [Direttore responsabile]: 15 RASSEGNA: WALTER GROPIUS 1907 - 1934. Bologna: Editrice C.I.P.I.A. s.r.l. , 1983. Original edition [anno 5, 15/3 – settembre 1983]. Text in Italian with parallel captions in Italian and English. Quarto. Plain thick wrappers. Printed dust jacket. 96 [xxxx] pp. 202 illustrations. Illustrated articles and advertisments. Interior unmarked and very clean. Out-of-print. Trivial wear overall, thus a nearly fine copy in publishers dust jacket.
9 x 12 softcover book with 96 pages and 202 color and black and white photos, illustration, diagrams and floorplans devoted to Walter Gropius’ architectural design from 1907 to 1934. Walter Gropius [1883-1969] was at the center of the architectural world for half a century: pioneer of the glass curtain wall and prefabricated housing; founder of the single most influential force on modern design, the Bauhaus; war hero; lover of the notorious Alma Mahler; teacher of great influence.
Contents
- Walter Gropius, Architecture in the Free People’s State
- Werner Oechslin, History and Style in Gropius
- Karin Wilhelm, Buildings for Industry
- Horst Claussen, Gropius and German Culture of the Early Twentieth Century
- Wolfgang Pehnt, Gropius the Romantic
- Annemarie Jaeggi, From the Closed Block to the Interpenetration of Volumes
- Karl-Heinz Huter, Total Work of Art, Total Work, Total Architecture
- Winfried Nerdinger, From the “Game of Construction” to the “Cooperative City”
- Falk Jaeger, The Siedlung at Torten
- Christine Kutschke, The Bauhaus Building
- Christian Schadlich, Gropius and Soviet Architecture
- Harmut Frank, A Constructive Leap Out of the Chaos
- List of Works and Projects 1907/1934
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.
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.
Under the loose directorship of Vittorio Gregotti, RASSEGNA is an Italian Design magazine underwritten by six Italian firms: Ariston, B&B Italia, Castelli, iGuzzini illuminazione, Molteni and co., and Sabiem. Each issue is devoted to a single designer or theme and is lavishly produced, with high-quality reproduction and carefully selected and presented illustrations.