Gropius House

[ablarc]

GROPIUS HOUSE, Lincoln, Mass.

http://66.230.220.70/images/post/gropiushouse/01.jpg

A beautiful house said to be designed by Marcel Breuer.

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Though he was Dean at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, Gropius wasn’t much with a pencil.

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He made sure he always had a partner with design talent.

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His first partner was Adolf Meyer, who designed the Bauhaus and established Gropius’ reputation.

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Breuer was even more talented. He’s noted for his chairs and later Brutalist architecture.

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Arguably Breuer’s best known work: the Whitney Museum, New York.

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Arguably Gropius’ best known American building: Pan Am (now MetLife) Building, Park Avenue, New York, probably by Pietro Belluschi.

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Gropius’ best known Boston Building: JFK Federal Building, Government Center.

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He lived a successful and bucolic life.

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[Fabrizio]

What year was this built? It doesn´t have the polished, expensive look I´d expect from a design like this...although perhaps it was designed to be modest. Were renovations done over time? Up-keep here must cost a fortune. Junky landscaping. No?

[ablarc]

What year was this built?
1938

It doesn´t have the polished, expensive look I´d expect from a design like this...although perhaps it was designed to be modest.
Gropius was a refugee and a socialist. Lincoln is and was perhaps Greater Boston’s most elite community (5-acre zoning), a home of country club leftists.

Were renovations done over time? Up-keep here must cost a fortune.
Most Modernist design disingenuously claimed its form was generated by function. That was never actually the case; its form was generated by Bauhaus stylistic dictates --while claiming that Modernism was not a style. A flat roof on a wood-frame clapboard house is not exactly functional --and this was before EPDM’s invention. Can you imagine how dangerous that gorgeous spiral stair was in the snow?

Junky landscaping. No?
Landscaping is not exactly an issue in Lincoln, where lots are so large that they’re left in a semi-woodland state (few front lawns). The house is spectacular to come upon by road: set pristinely among trees on a rise. Breathtakingly pure and clean. You can imagine the influence on GSD student and MOMA curator, P. Johnson. Lincoln has other Modernist houses, many invisible from the road --though they’re being surreptitiously replaced by McMansions.

From galinsky (http://www.galinsky.com/buildings/gropiushouse/):

Gropius House
68 Baker Bridge Road
Lincoln
Massachusetts 01773
USA

Walter Gropius 1938

The home Walter Gropius built for his family soon after moving from to the US from Germany had a dramatic impact on American architecture, as an early and prominent example of what the Americans, to Gropius' dislike, called the new International Style. Its detailing keeps strongly to the principles of the Bauhaus, which Gropius had founded and directed in Germany, exploiting simple, well-designed but mass-produced fittings for steel wall lights, chromed banisters etc., as well as in the structure of the house (glass block walls complementing the wooden frame and New England clapboarding).

The house is designed and detailed to work almost theatrically as a whole. The lighting in the dining room, for example, mixes a single art-gallery spotlight recessed in the ceiling, whose beam exactly covers the circular table but not the diners; a second spotlight in the study, backlighting the glass-block wall between the two rooms and silhouetting the sprawling plant that climbs the glass wall; and exterior floodlights illuminating the trees in the garden.

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The minimalist color scheme is maintained throughout the house - black, white, pale grays and earth colors, with sparsely used contrasting splashes of red.

Gropius uses interior clapboard for further ingenious lighting effects: set vertically on the walls of the entrance hall, the angle of each overlapping board stops light, rather than rain, reaching the near edge of its neighbor; the result is an appealing pattern of shadows generated by the contrastingly simple mass-produced wall lights.

Arguing against the label of 'International Style', Gropius comments:
'As to my practice, when I built my first house in the U.S.A. - which was my own - I made it a point to absorb into my own conception those features of the New England architectural tradition that I found still alive and adequate (condescending, huh?). This fusion of the regional spirit with a contemporary approach to design produced a house that I would never have built in Europe with its entirely different climatic, technical and psychological background.' (Yeah, he would have used stucco in place of clapboard, but otherwise…)

--Walter Gropius, Scope of Total Architecture, 1956

http://66.230.220.70/images/post/gropiushouse/21.jpg
Simon Glynn 1999 (updated 2004)
________________________________________

How to visit

The Gropius House is on the edge of Lincoln, about 45 minutes' drive west of Boston. Take Route 2 west past Lexington and Lincoln to Route 126 south. After passing Walden Pond on the right, turn left onto Baker Bridge Road. The Gropius House is on the right after Woods End Road.

The house is run by the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities (SPNEA), which opens it to the public. You can see the inside of the house through excellent guided tours on the hour, and can wander round the outside (which is also visible from the road) at will.

The house is not open every day, so check before going. For up-to-date information on prices and opening times, call +1 781 259 8098.

Further discussed in: Classic Modern Homes of the Thirties: 64 Designs by Neutra, Gropius, Breuer, Stone and Others by James Ford and Katherine Morrow Ford

The SPNEA site has further information about the Gropius House, and photographs, at www.spnea.org/visit/tour/house.asp

.

[Luca]

If I may be allowed a critique...

GROPIUS HOUSE, Lincoln, Mass.

http://66.230.220.70/images/post/gropiushouse/01.jpg

No symmetry. Wot's that set of bars to the left? Ugly. Horizontal/strip windows just don't work. Overall a feeling of alienation, confusion, harshness.

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The outside/inside thing confsues what hosues are FOR.

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Lots of overhangs with glomy results but forming no real shelter from elements.

http://66.230.220.70/images/post/gropiushouse/11.jpg

"Arguably Breuer’s best known work: the Whitney Museum, New York."

Aiiighh! An extremely inhuman building. Appalling.


"Arguably Gropius’ best known American building: Pan Am (now MetLife) Building, Park Avenue, New York, probably by Pietro Belluschi."

Tear it down. Now. Please?

.

[czsz]

Gropius’ best known Boston Building: JFK Federal Building, Government Center.

Depressing but somewhat appropriate. The closest thing there is in Boston to the landscape of what Gropius' native eastern Germany became...

[Luca]

Depressing but somewhat appropriate. The closest thing there is in Boston to the landscape of what Gropius' native eastern Germany became...

:D :D :D

That said, some of the Bahaus buildings themselves are pretty good

[ablarc]

That said, some of the Bahaus buildings themselves are pretty good
BAUHAUS
The most influential building of the past hundred years.

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[ablarc]

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NOT BAUHAUS

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[Luca]

http://66.230.220.70/images/post/Bauhaus/500.jpg



THAT is the stuff that drives me absolutely batshit !!! :mad: :( :confused:

Not only is it silly and gimmicky, it's not even inexpensive or efficient, like the original modernist stuff was supposed to be. It's such an eyesore. :eek: The 'anonymous;' building to its left is so superior in every sense. Why do people want to turn buildings into one-liner jokes?? :rolleyes:

[Jasonik]

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7388709094938953180&q=architecture+duration%3Along