Walter Adolph Georg Gropius was born in Berlin on 18 May 1883 (Passed away on 5 July 1969), son and grandson of architects, whose influence led him to study architecture in Munich and Berlin. After completing his studies, he worked in Peter Behrens' practice, where he later became independent. Between 1910 and 1915, he worked primarily on the rehabilitation and expansion of the Fagus Factory in Alfeld. This work pioneered modern architecture its thin metal structures, large glazed surfaces, flat roofs and orthogonal forms.
In addition, Gropius founded the famous Bauhaus School, a design school that taught students to use modern and innovative materials to create buildings, furniture and original and functional objects. He was in charge of it first in Weimar and then in Dessau, from 1919 to 1928.
From 1926, Gropius was intensely devoted to the design of housing blocks, which saw the solution to social and urban problems, in addition to betting for the rationalization in the construction industry, which would allow building faster and more economically.
Before the First World War, Gropius was already part of a movement of aesthetic renovation, represented by the Deutscher Werkbund, which aimed to unite art with industrial design.
After the war, Gropius, in his role as director of the Sächsischen Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Arts and Crafts) and Sächsischen Hochschule für bildene Kunst (Superior School of Fine Arts), decides to merge the two schools under the name of "Staatliches Bauhaus "combining their academic goals and adding an architecture section. The building constructed for the school itself is a symbol of the most representative ideas of the Bauhaus: "form follows function".
In 1934 Gropius was forced to leave Germany due to the Nazi aggressions suffered by the Bauhaus and his work. He lived and worked for three years in England moving to America later, where he was a professor of architecture at the Harvard Design School. In 1946 The Architects Collaborative, Inc., a group of young architects known as TAC, of which he was responsible for the direction and training of the members for several years.
Walter Gropius died in Boston in 1969, at the age of 86 years old. His buildings reflect the style of the Bauhaus, with new materials used in their construction giving them a modern look, unknown at that time. Smooth facades and clear lines lack unnecessary decorative elements. This architecture has made him one of the key leaders of the so-called 'International Style' in architecture.
