Gropius House

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Gropius House
National Register of Historic Places
National Historic Landmark
Historic District Contributing Property
The house in 2005

The house in 2005

Gropius House (Massachusetts)
Paris plan pointer b jms.svg
location Lincoln , Massachusetts , United States
Coordinates 42 ° 25 '37.4 "  N , 71 ° 19' 42.8"  W Coordinates: 42 ° 25 '37.4 "  N , 71 ° 19' 42.8"  W.
surface 5.51  acres (2.2  ha )
Built 1938
architect Walter Gropius , Marcel Breuer
Architectural style Modern , international style
NRHP number 00000709
Data
The NRHP added May 16, 2000
Declared as an  NHL May 16, 2000
Declared as  CP July 8, 1988

The Gropius House is the former home of the architect Walter Gropius in Lincoln in the state of Massachusetts in the United States . It was built in 1938 and lived in by Gropius and his family until his death in 1969. In 1988, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places as a Contributing Property of the Woods End Road Historic District and classified as a National Historic Landmark in 2000 . Now owned by Historic New England , it has been open to the public as a museum since 1984 .

description

With an area of ​​more than 2 hectares, the entry of the NRHP includes  the house itself, the garage, which has been converted into a visitor center, and the landscaping of the property.

Residential building

The living room of the house, shortly after completion

The house is set in a rural setting around 30 meters from the road on the highest point of a hill in the middle of the property. To the west, Mount Wachusett and Mount Monadnock are within sight.

Although the company of Walter Gropius and his partner Marcel Breuer is registered as the architect of the house, it was actually a joint effort of many people, including Walter's wife Ise and his adopted daughter Ati , who was twelve at the time . They also helped to shape the immediate vicinity of the house.

The house is structurally a combination of a balloon frame and some reinforced individual elements based on the timber frame construction that was prevalent in New England up to the middle of the 19th century. In addition to wood, steel girders or pillars were also used.

For the construction of the house, Gropius only used materials and components that could be ordered as standard or catalog goods. This was done on the one hand for economic reasons, on the other hand he wanted to show that modern buildings can be built from existing American industrial products. The only two exceptions to this rule are the metal staircase handrail made on site and the outdoor spotlights.

The house, which is equipped with a flat roof , is two stories high, stands on a stone foundation and has a living space of around 214 square meters. The walls are made of wood from the sequoia tree painted white . On the west side there is a gray-painted fireplace built in the Flemish association . Large windows in the living areas provide plenty of light; in order to reduce the sun's rays on the south side, the roof was extended to create a brise-soleil in summer . A centrally installed water drain made the installation of gutters superfluous. The house has only a partial basement. The elongated, covered entrance area, which is at a 30-degree angle from the building, is particularly striking.

The entrance leads to a central hall that extends up to the roof, from which all rooms branch off on both floors, so that there was no need for corridors. The walls of the hall are clad with white, vertically attached wooden boards, while the floor is made of cork panels, which had to be replaced in 1988 due to heavy wear and tear. All other surfaces in the house - as well as some of the plants - are still in their original form.

The geographic location and orientation of the house, the size and position of the windows and the landscaping of the surroundings were the result of a long planning phase that preceded the construction. The rooms were designed so that the family could take most of their furniture from their home in Dessau as well as selected pieces from Gropius' office in the Bauhaus Dessau . Some furnishings were also made specifically for the house in Lincoln. Today the furniture there is the most extensive collection of Bauhaus objects outside of Germany.

The family also acquired other contemporary furnishings or received them as gifts. These include one of Marcel Breuer-designed and in the UK by Isokon from plywood manufactured chaise , another, consisting of plastic chaise lounge by Eero Saarinen and two in 1956 by Sori Yanagi designed chairs. The family was particularly proud of the carbon arc lamp above the dining table.

Spread throughout the house are works of art from the Gropius family collection, created by artists such as Alexander Schawinsky , Herbert Bayer , László Moholy-Nagy and Josef Albers . A small bronze figure in the living room is a copy of the Thermopylae statue by Dimitri Hadzi , the original of which can be seen in the John F. Kennedy Federal Building in Boston .

Landscaping

The archway off the veranda frames the view into the distance. The Japanese garden is located between the veranda and the archway.

At the time of planning there was an orchard with 90 apple trees outside the property , five of which the family selected to move to their property and include in the design. Basically, the surroundings of the house were designed in such a way that, with increasing distance from the house, they appeared less and less created by humans and merged seamlessly into the natural or found surroundings at the property boundary.

An archway was built around 6 meters south of the veranda, the columns of which are made of structural steel and support a wooden beam. The main purpose of this archway is to provide a visual framework for looking into more distant areas. Other design elements include low stone walls, some of which already existed or were newly added due to previous agricultural use. The plants on the property were also selected individually and placed in a targeted manner; The day and palm lilies at the entrance to the house are intended to support the visual effect of the aluminum sculpture by RE Filipowski located there. Since Ise and Walter Gropius were not trained landscape architects, the design of the house environment took a long time and was constantly being adapted.

The last major change in 1957 was the redesign of part of the outdoor area into a Japanese garden , which the family had been inspired to make on a previous trip to Japan . At the same time, they also replanted a Japanese maple .

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : Gropius House  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Listing of National Historic Landmarks by State: Massachusetts. National Park Service , accessed August 10, 2019.
  2. ↑ a b c cf. Grady / Pitts, p. 4.
  3. ↑ a b cf. Grady / Pitts, p. 5.
  4. ↑ cf. Grady / Pitts, p. 6 f.
  5. ↑ a b cf. Grady / Pitts, p. 8.
  6. ↑ cf. Grady / Pitts, p. 9.
  7. ↑ a b cf. Grady / Pitts, p. 10.
  8. ↑ cf. Grady / Pitts, p. 11.