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A R C H I T E C T U R E + D E S I G N P R O F I L E | W A LT E R G R O P I U S at The Museum of Modern Art in late 1938. The exhibit was one of the museum's largest to date, presenting almost 700 examples of the school's works, from graphics and furniture to rugs, plates, paintings and architectural plans—and was a hit, drawing a record attendance. For a while Gropius was joined in his archi- tectural practice by Marcel Breuer, a protege from the Bauhaus who became a fellow faculty member at Harvard. (The two's student roster is an American Who's Who of Modernist archi- tects that includes I. M. Pei, Paul Rudolph and Philip Johnson.) A famed architect and furni- ture innovator in his own right, among Breuer's innovations are the well-known Wassily Chair and the Cesca Chair, both which he designed while at the Bauhaus. The former chair was admired by Bauhaus instructor Wassily Kandin- sky, prompting Breuer to create a duplicate for the painter. Then there was the Chicago contingent. Mies van der Rohe, the last director of the Bauhaus before it closed, became head of the architec- ture school at Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT). His style, articulated over the next few decades from his adopted hometown of Chicago, defined Jet Age utilitarian glamour in the form of sleek office towers and high- rise apartment buildings. He was joined in Chicago by another Bauhaus exile, the painter and photographer László Moholy-Nagy, who founded the New Bauhaus, which eventually became part of IIT. Like Gropius and Breuer at Harvard, their respective curriculums were game-changing for designers, and many of their teaching methods would became stan- dard in art and design schools. In the spring of 1961, a symposium at Colum- bia University's School of Architecture honored four pillars of Modernist architecture. Le Corbusier. Frank Lloyd Wright. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Walter Gropius. That two of its acknowledged leaders had been Bauhaus founding fathers, and now were among the most vital and influential architects in America, must have been a keen triumph for the two men. A satisfying confirmation that their ideas were being realized on a broad and eager scale, in countless buildings and homes constructed far from the Bauhaus. Even those as far away as Southern California, where the sun-soaked desert and coastal communities still present a perfect canvas for those Bauhaus buildings of the future, described by Gropius over a hundred years ago—sheathed in steel and glass, framing otherworldly natural scenes and rising "from the hands of a million workers like the crystal symbol of a new faith." This avant-garde spirit carried across the Bauhaus campus. Students paraded paper lanterns they designed through the streets of Weimar. The improvisational musical stylings of the eclectic Bauhaus band were heard at artist festivals throughout Germany. And an evening program might consist of a concert given by composer Béla Bartók, or a lecture by astronomer Finlay Freundlich, then working with Einstein on relativity. By 1933 the school had shuttered, but its ideas, methods of teaching and practitioners would propagate well beyond Germany. Gropius would end up in Massachusetts, teaching at Harvard, where he became Chair of the Department of Architecture. By 1938 he built his personal residence in nearby Lincoln— Gropius House, now a National Landmark. It embodied the architectural premises of the Bauhaus: a structure of clean-line efficiency and simple beauty, born of natural light and strict utility in the service of its inhabitants. It also became a well-known model of the emerging International Style of architecture, intriguing to the American public of the 1930's. So too was the wide-ranging Bauhaus exhibit Top: The original Bauhaus school in Dessau. Credit: Photo by cdschock is licensed under CC BY 2.0. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/legalcode Bottom: Today the Bauhaus Archive in Berlin, based on plans by Gropius himself and opened in 1979, collects and displays works and artifacts related to the famous school. Credit: Photo by dalbera is licensed under CC BY 2.0. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/legalcode 30 DIGS.NET | 8.25.23

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