One of the defining figures of 20th-century architecture, Walter Gropius founded the Bauhaus, the influential German school of art and design. He championed a new philosophy that sought to unite different disciplines and embrace the possibilities of the industrial age.
Born in Berlin in 1883, Gropius studied architecture in Munich and Berlin before joining the office of architect Peter Behrens in 1908. He established his own architectural practice in 1910, exploring the relationship between form and function. His first major commission — the Fagus shoe factory (1911), designed with Adolf Meyer — pioneered the use of steel and glass in industrial architecture.
In 1919, following World War I, Gropius founded the Bauhaus in Weimar. His ambition was to dissolve the boundaries between fine art and applied arts, encouraging collaboration across painting, sculpture, architecture, furniture design, textiles and more. The school attracted leading creative figures of the period, including Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky and Josef Albers. Reflecting on its collaborative approach, Gropius shared, ‘The isolation of the artist makes it difficult to produce a really grown-together work of art, where painting, sculpture and architecture exist as a unit... Only at the Bauhaus did we achieve this working together.’
In 1925, the Bauhaus relocated to Dessau, where Gropius designed its celebrated school building. Characterised by its geometric forms and glass curtain wall, the building became an enduring symbol of Modernist architecture.
Gropius resigned as director of the Bauhaus in 1928 but continued to practice architecture. He left Germany in 1934 following the rise of the Nazi regime, spending three years in Britain before moving to the United States in 1937. Appointed professor of architecture at Harvard University, he introduced Bauhaus principles to a new generation of architects. In 1945, he co-founded The Architects Collaborative (TAC), a practice built on the principles of collective creativity and collaboration.
Gropius died in Boston in 1969, aged 86. His progressive vision fundamentally reshaped the relationship between art, design, technology and the built environment, leaving a lasting imprint on modern architecture.