Notes on Walter Gropius: Material and Artistic Culture

Problems of Material and Artistic Culture

Walter Gropius

Boundaries of Architecture

Walter Gropius (1883-1969) was a prominent 20th-century architect, educator, and architectural theorist.
His key works from the early 20th century, including the "Faguswerk" factory (1911), the Cologne Exhibition Building (1914), the "Chicago Tribune" project (1924), and the Bauhaus school building (1925-1926), marked significant milestones in modern architecture.
- These projects symbolized functional and constructive truthfulness, anti-stylization, and the integration of artistic creation with industrial production.
Gropius founded the "State Bauhaus" in 1919, an influential art and industrial design school that was shut down by the Nazis in 1933.
- The Bauhaus program aimed to develop architects and designer-constructors with a synthesis of art and technology, encouraging a creative approach to reality.
Gropius' writings, including his book "Scope of Total Architecture," focused on cultivating artistic and creative abilities to counter the dehumanizing effects of industrialization and intellectualization under capitalism.
- His work addressed topics such as industrialization, mass housing, social design, art education, anti-individualism, anti-formalism, and organic architectural planning.
The provided articles showcase the evolution of Gropius' ideas over half a century, revealing the contradictions and explorations in his work within a bourgeois society.
This publication marks the first Russian translation of "Scope of Total Architecture" and a collection of Gropius' articles.

Scope of Total Architecture

The book "Scope of Total Architecture" by Walter Gropius was translated into Russian for the first time.
The book title in English is "Scope of Total Architecture", published by Harper and Bros, New York, 1955.
It includes the following sections:
- Preface by V. Tasalov: "Total Architecture" - Utopia or Reality?
- Part I: The Education of the Architect and Designer-Constructor
  - Method
  - My conception of the Bauhaus idea
  - Aim
  - Art and Craft schools
  - Difference between craft and machine labor
  - Teaching at the Bauhaus. Preparatory course
  - Visual language.
  - Training in the workshops
  - Development of standard types
  - Creative teaching
  - Does a science of form exist?
  - Actuality and illusion
  - Subconscious reaction
  - Teaching the formation.
  - Psychological influence of shapes and colors.
  - Correlation
  - What is the human scale
  - Distance, time and spacial relationships
  - Need for change
  - Nominal denominator for design
  - The Plan for architecture education
    - A. Common education foundation
    - Origins of Abstract Art
    - Equilibrium between experience and education book
    - B. Program
      - Art in the schools
      - Art in kindergarten
      - Creative shaping
      - Teaching Method
      - Professional training design
      - Visual language
      - Common denominator in shape
      - Emphasis on practical experience
      - Experimental workshop
      - Professional training
      - Construction practice and preliminary course
      - History of Art and Architecture
- Part II: Modern Architect
  - 5. A Glance at the Development of Modern Architecture
  - 6. Archeology or architecture for modern buildings?
    - The absence of a responsive audience
    - Human scale for the city
    - The need for life experiments
    - A thirst for vagrancy
    - Artist - prototype of the "integral human being"
    - Complex Mind
    - Individual Freedom and Collective Action
    - Lack of Moral imitative.
  - 7. Architect in our industrial society
    - Introduction
    - "Housing" - this is not enough
    - Our Nature
    - The Separation of Design and Implementation
    - Example of an artist and designer
    - Industrialization and fabrication of houses
    - Brigade Work
  - 8. Architect - servant or leader?
    - Forming a "style"?
    - Looking for a form standard against the Cult.
    - Customer
    - Machine and Sciennce serving human life
    - Is there an regional expressiveness?
    - Service and leadership
- Part III: Planning and housing construction
  - 9. CIAM 1925-1953
  - 1. Sociological requirements of minimum dwelling
  - 1. Low, Medium or High rise?
    - Prerequisites
    - Land
    - Advantages and Disadvantages of Hi-Rise
  - 1. Organic planning of a region
    - Absence of completeness
    - Human PoV
    - Growing Social indifference
    - General Social Order Mode
    - New Regional Language
    - Industry impacts
    - Favoring a public center
    - Suggestions on a Practical Reconstruction
    - Processo and sequence of public planning
  - 1. Core Issues (community center)
  - 1. Housing Industry
  - 1. Way out of housing tangle
- Part IV: Scope of Total Architecture
  - 1. Scopo of Total Architecture
    - Age of Science
    - Strategic Goal
    - Reconnection Task
Articles and speeches:
- Tradition and continuity in architecture (1964)
- Foreword to the book "Buildings of the Bauhaus in Dessau> (1930).
- (Translated by V. R. Aronova).
- Systematic preparation of rational housing construction (1930). (Translated by V. G. Kalisha)
- Speech at the opening of the Higher School of Design in Ulm (1955). (Translated by V. R. Aronova).
- The role of the architect in modern society (1961). (Translated by V. R. Aronova)
- The idea and structure of the Bauhaus (1924). (Translated by V. R. Aronova)
- Sustainability of the Bauhaus idea (1922). (Translated by V. G. Kalisha)
- Speech to students of the State Bauhaus at the exhibition of student works in 1919. (Translated by V. R. Aronova)
- Program for the establishment of an «Universal Housebuilding Society» on a unified artistic basis (1910). (Translated by V. R. Aronova)
- The role of forms of industrial architecture in the formation of style (1914). (Translated by V. G. Kalisha)
- Proposals for the creation of an educational institution as a consulting organization on artistic issues for industrial, handicraft and handicraft production (1916). (Translated by V. G. Kalisha)
- Program of the State Bauhaus in Weimar (1919). (Translated by V. R. Aronova)
Comments.
Main dates of life and creativeness of V. Gropius.
Index of main theoretical works of V. Gropius

Preface (V. Tasalov)

"Total Architecture" - Utopia or Reality?

Walter Gropius is a well-known architect and thinker of the 20th century, but his theoretical works haven't been published in Russian, unlike Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright.
Gropius' work is seen as belonging to the past, but his ideas about the holistic education of architects and the integration of art, industry, and social responsibility remain relevant.
Gropius' concept of "total architecture" involves the synthesis of material and artistic elements in practice, addressing key cultural problems of the 20th century.
Gropius is one of the "four greats" of modern architecture, but his greatness lies in his complex and spiritually intense concept of architecture.
Gropius emphasizes the collaborative nature of architectural creation and sees architecture as a means of shaping a better social life.
Gropius views architecture as a means of "life-building" and strives to integrate life's spatial organization with artistic expression and technological progress.
Gropius advocated for the grand mission of "total architecture," emphasizing the need to perceive the world, nature, humans, and art as a unified whole.
The question is whether such a program is realistic or merely a utopian dream, requiring an examination of the aesthetic foundations of Gropius' concept.
Because everyday processes in capitalist society are unaesthetic, the harmonious expression in architecture is the prerogative of the artist, merging them in the purely "visual unity."
Gropius' initial aim was to artistically master the industrial production of objects, but it evolved into a program for elevating the artist as the "prototype of the integrated human being."
Gropius connected the mission of the "artistic human" to the well-being of democracy, emphasizing the "magical-metaphorical" function of art.
There are valid reason's for this open manifestation of salvational's function of arts when life became subjected to new capitalist policies.
However the writer recognizes that communism and not art is the real answer to the problems of society.