Gropius House
Gropius House, located in Lincoln, Massachusetts, is a notable example of the Bauhaus architectural style, reflecting a blend of traditional New England elements and modern, mass-produced materials. Designed by Walter Gropius in 1937, this residential structure was built in a former apple orchard and serves as an experimental model that integrates simple, unadorned design with innovative industrial technologies. The house features a minimalist aesthetic, characterized by a stark color palette and functional furnishings crafted by Bauhaus designers. Noteworthy elements include chrome banisters, cork flooring, and a glass wall, harmonizing with traditional materials like clapboards and stone.
Gropius House is not merely a home; it embodies Gropius's vision of utilizing affordable materials for broader housing access, which resonated during the economic challenges of the Depression era. The design principles showcased in the Gropius House significantly influenced American architecture, impacting generations of architects who followed, including prominent figures like Philip Johnson and I. M. Pei. As both a functional dwelling and a statement of modernist ideals, Gropius House continues to be a celebrated symbol of the intersection between art, craft, and technology in architecture.
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Gropius House
Identification Modernist residence designed by Walter Gropius of the Bauhaus school
Date Built in 1937
During the 1930’s, when industrial technology and mass production were becoming more prominent, Walter Gropius, the famous founder of the German Bauhaus school and master architect, built a house in Lincoln, Massachusetts. This was instrumental in bringing the revolutionary Bauhaus style of architecture to the United States.
Using mass-produced materials, the Bauhaus style, also known as the International Modern style, epitomized rationality, functionality, and economy by bringing together elements of the Arts and Crafts movement with industrial technology to produce simple, unadorned buildings. The Bauhaus school thrived in Germany from 1919 until 1933, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime rose to power. The Nazis viewed the bare, basic forms of the Bauhaus as reflective of communist and Jewish influences and closed Gropius’s school in 1937. After the school was shuttered, Gropius fled to England and then moved to the United States, where he became chairperson of the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and settled in Lincoln, Massachusetts.
Somewhat incongruous with its quintessential New England setting, Gropius’s box-style house was built in 1937 in what was once an apple orchard. More than just a domestic dwelling, the house was an experimental model that fused traditional New England architectural elements with machine-made materials not commonly used in construction at the time. Mass-produced fittings, chrome banisters, cork floors, recessed lighting, a glass wall supported by a wood frame, and exterior floodlights coexisted with New England clapboards, brick, and fieldstone. Stark rather than ornamental, the minimalist color scheme of the house’s interior featured gray, black, white, and earth tones, broken up by an occasional spot of red. The furniture fashioned by Bauhaus craftsman Marcel Breuer also embodied the functional principles of the school’s aesthetic, as did artworks scattered throughout the house, many of which were created by important modernist artists.
Impact
The simple, utilitarian design features of the Gropius House had an enormous and long-lasting influence on American architecture. In weaving together art, craft, and technology, the house reflected one of Gropius’s deeply held beliefs—that cheap, mass-produced materials could be used to provide cost-effective housing for the general population, an attractive idea during the Depression era. Gropius’s legacy lived on in his students, some of whom became prominent twentieth century architects, including Philip Johnson, I. M. Pei, and Lawrence Halprin.
Bibliography
Ford, James, and Katherine Morrow Ford. Classic Modern Homes of the Thirties: Sixty-four Designs of Neutra, Gropius, Breuer, Stone, and Others. New York: Dover, 1989.
Gropius, Walter. The New Architecture and the Bauhaus. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1965.
Lupger, Gilbert, and Paul Sigel. Walter Gropius, 1883-1969: The Promoter of a New Form. Los Angeles: Taschen, 2005.