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Essay on Walter Gropius
Walter Gropius was one of the leading German architects as well as educators of the 20th century. He was born in Berlin on May 18, 1883. His father, as well named Walter, was an architect too. He studied architecture in Munich and worked in the office of Peter Behrens in Berlin. His first job was with Peter Behrens, who thought in buildings that incorporated the design of living. He became Behrens chief trainee. As well he believed in the German Werkbund philosophy, which affirms that, certain proportions obvious from the times of the Greeks in the Parthenon the sign of the Greek Doric style, which includes the golden ratio, through the Middle Ages and onward. Fundamentally it is the theory of the Golden Ratio, the most agreeable and perfect ratios to exist. When his apprenticeship was finished in 1910, Walter Gropius opened a private practice. He worked in partnership with Adolf Meyer until 1924-1925. This period was the most productive of Gropius's long career; he designed most of his important buildings during this time.
The Fagus factory in Alfeld-an-der-Leine in 1911 instantaneously established his status as an imperative architect. Distinguished for its extensive glass exterior and narrow piers, the facade of the main wing is the prototype of the modern metal and glass curtain wall. The omission of solid elements at the corners of the structure intensifies the impression of the building as a glass-enclosed, transparent volume. (Sigfried Giedion, 1992)
In his next most important work, the Administration Building for the Werkbund Exhibition in Cologne in 1914, Gropius carried the plan further by glazing the complete facade including the corner stairwells. His way in the Chicago Tribune competition of 1922 was an application of these ideologies to skyscraper design. Contrary to the winning Gothic design by Raymond Hood, Gropius's solution was free of all assorted or historical detail...........
