A Material Evaluation of the Gropius House: Planning to Preserve a Modern Masterpiece
1997; Volume: 28; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/1504591
ISSN0848-8525
Autores Tópico(s)Architecture and Art History Studies
ResumoDespite Walter Gropius's international reputation as an architect and teacher, when he and his wife, Ise, arrived in the United States in 1937 they were virtually destitute. In 1934 they left their furnishings, artwork, and personal belongings in the care of Ise's sister and escaped the increasingly hostile Nazi regime for the safety of an architectural partnership in London, England. In 1937 Gropius responded to an invitation to become a professor of architecture at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University. Soon thereafter, Henry Shepley, a prominent Boston architect, convinced Mrs. Helen Storrow, an elderly philanthropist, to provide the land in rural Lincoln, Massachusetts, and funding for Walter to design and build a house for himself and Ise. Gropius sited the house at the top of a rise, with a long drive leading up through an old orchard. Ground was broken in March 1938. Gropius was intimately involved in all aspects of the design, including the selection of materials. Marcel Breuer, an architect and former colleague at the Master of the Carpentry Workshop of the Bauhaus, arrived in the U.S. soon after the Gropiuses, also to join the Harvard faculty. Mrs. Storrow provided an adjacent lot on the same terms, and the two architects worked as partners to plan and build their houses. Their modern, flat-roofed houses became tangible advertisements for their work but clashed with the Colonial Revivalstyle house of their neighbor James Loud. The Loud family complained about being surrounded by chicken ,, 1 coops. In fact, Gropius's design combined many traditional materials (pine clapboards, brick, fieldstone, and redwood sheathing) with industrial materials (glass blocks, welded steel, acoustic plaster, and chromed metal). It was a laboratory for Gropius's ideas, as well as an effective teaching tool for Harvard students who saw the house under
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