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Bauhaus Archiv opens Amerika 1928 ~ Photos of a Study Trip by Walter Gropius

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Thursday, 20 November 2008 02:41

Walter/Ise Gropius - 1928. Blick auf Lower Manhattan von der Brooklyn Bridge, NY - Bildnachweis: Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin / © VG Bild-Kunst Bonn, 2008 

BERLIN.- "Gropius praises efficiency here" runs the headline in the New York Times on May 27, 1928. The article relates that the architect Walter Gropius had been in America for several weeks to study the more efficient and timesaving methods of mass production. In the spring of 1928, Walter Gropius had resigned his post as director of the Bauhaus Dessau and, together with his wife Ise, embarked on a much longed-for study trip through the USA. There he would deal primarily with modern building techniques, particularly the steel-frame construction of New York skyscrapers. The trip is financed by Adolf Sommerfeld, the building contractor and longtime patron of the Bauhaus, with whom Gropius plans to carry out large building projects in Berlin that will make use of the state-of-the-art technology.

Having arrived in America, Gropius stays in New York for almost three weeks. According to Ise Gropius, the travelers take a look at just about every skyscraper then under construction. The couple then journeys on via Washington and Chicago to Arizona, where they visit the Hopi and Havasupai Indian reservations and are captivated by the barren expanse of the American landscape. On their return trip to New York, they pass through Los Angeles and visit the famous Ford plant in Detroit. They meet the architects and friends Richard Neutra and Albert Kahn, who briefly accompany them along their route.

Bank of New York & Trust Co. Bauzustände 9, 1928. Architekt: B.W. Morris. Fotograf: Irving Underhill. Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin.After seven weeks of intensive learning experiences, Walter and Ise Gropius return to Germany. They have some 400 of their own photographs in their luggage. These depict New York buildings in the slanted perspective typical of that era, the modern architecture of their well-known colleagues Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Neutra and Albert Kahn, and also their private impressions of the land and people of America. Until today, these photographs have never before been shown to the public. But the Gropiuses also brought back a number of virtuoso architectural images by American photographers: documentation of high-rise construction that records every conceivable stage of the process, from construction pit to the skyscraper´s completion, along with the world-famous photograph "Criss-Crossed Conveyors" by one of America´s most significant modern photographers, Charles Sheeler.

Gropius created innovative designs that borrowed materials and methods of construction from modern technology. This advocacy of industrialized building carried with it a belief in team work and an acceptance of standardization and prefabrication. Using technology as a basis, he transformed building into a science of precise mathematical calculations.

An important theorist and teacher, Gropius introduced a screen wall system that utilized a structural steel frame to support the floors and which allowed the external glass walls to continue without interruption.  Gropius died in Boston, Massachusetts in 1969

This Bauhaus-Archiv exhibition on the occasion of the 125th anniversary of the birth of Walter Gropius this year is being presented as part of the "Third European Month of Photography" in and is generously supported by HOCHTIEF.