Walter Gropius

Walter Gropius established his own architecture and industrial design practice in 1910. His output in this period included wallpapers, mass-produced interior furnishings, car bodies and even a diesel locomotive. The Fagus Factory in Alfeld an der Leine, which he designed together with Adolf Meyer, would be his first major architectural work. With its transparent façade of steel and glass, this factory building is widely held to be a pioneering work of what later became known as Modern Architecture, evolving eventually in the 1920s into the Neues Bauen - New Objectivity movement. The Fagus Factory was awarded UNESCO World Heritage status in June 2011. After the First World War, Gropius became a founding member of the Bauhaus. In 1919 he succeeded Henry van de Veldes as the Director of the Großherzoglich-Sächsischen Hochschule für Bildende Kunst in Weimar and renamed the institute Staatliches Bauhaus in Weimar. Gropius held the office of Director in Weimar until 1926 and subsequently in Dessau. He was succeeded by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, who directed the Bauhaus until its closure in 1933. Gropius immigrated to England in 1934, following a smear campaign by the Nazis, who branded the Bauhaus a Church of Marxism. In 1937 he relocated to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he served as a professor of architecture at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design.