Walter Adolph Georg Gropius (18 May 1883 – 5 July 1969) was a German-born American architect and founder of the Bauhaus School,[1] who is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of modernist architecture.

Walter's great-uncle Martin Gropius (1824–1880) was the architect of the Kunstgewerbemuseum in Berlin and a follower of Karl Friedrich Schinkel, with whom Walter's great-grandfather Carl Gropius, who fought under Field Marshal Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher at the Battle of Waterloo, had shared a flat as a bachelor.

[9] In 1908, after studying architecture in Munich and Berlin for four semesters, Gropius joined the office of the architect and industrial designer Peter Behrens, one of the first members of the utilitarian school.

[8] His fellow employees at this time included Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, and Dietrich Marcks.

Together they share credit for one of the pioneering modernist buildings created during this period: the Faguswerk in Alfeld-an-der-Leine, Germany, a shoe last factory.

Gropius published an article about "The Development of Industrial Buildings" in 1913, which included about a dozen photographs of factories and grain elevators in North America.

A very influential text, this article had a strong influence on other European modernists, including Le Corbusier and Erich Mendelsohn, both of whom reprinted Gropius's grain elevator pictures between 1920 and 1930.

He was drafted in August 1914 and served as a sergeant major at the Western front during the war years (getting wounded and almost killed)[12] and then as a lieutenant in the signal corps.

Henry van de Velde, the master of the Grand-Ducal Saxon School of Arts and Crafts in Weimar was asked to step down in 1915 due to his Belgian nationality.

Gropius School of Arts), attracting a faculty that included Paul Klee, Johannes Itten, Josef Albers, Herbert Bayer, László Moholy-Nagy, Otto Bartning and Wassily Kandinsky.

In principle, the Bauhaus represented an opportunity to extend beauty and quality to every home through well designed industrially produced objects.

Facing political and financial difficulties in Weimar, Gropius and the Bauhaus moved to Dessau in 1925 following an offer from the city.

Gropius was able to leave Nazi Germany in 1934 with the help of Maxwell Fry on the pretext of making a temporary visit to Italy for a film propaganda festival; he then fled to the United Kingdom to avoid the fascist powers of Europe.

Although not Jewish, his association with "degenerate" modern art despised by the Nazis meant he was obliged to emigrate when commissions dried up.

[22] He lived and worked in the artists' community associated with Herbert Read in Hampstead, London, as part of the Isokon group.

Gropius arrived in the United States in February 1937, while their twelve-year-old daughter, Ati, finished the school year in England.

The Gropiuses believed their house could embody architectural qualities similar to those practiced today, such as simplicity, economy, and aesthetic beauty.

[23] Helen Storrow, a banker's wife and philanthropist, became Gropius's benefactor when she invested a portion of her land and wealth for the architect's home.

[25] Gropius and his Bauhaus protégé Marcel Breuer both moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to teach at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (1937–1952)[26] and collaborate on projects including The Alan I W Frank House in Pittsburgh and the company-town Aluminum City Terrace project in New Kensington, Pennsylvania, before their professional split.

[29] In 1945, Gropius was asked by the young founding members of The Architects Collaborative (TAC) to join as their senior partner.

In the early 1990s, a series of books entitled The Walter Gropius Archive was published covering his entire architectural career.