Architect Drawings : A Selection of Sketches by World Famous Architects Through History

Gropius, Walter (1883–1969)
Lorant Residence, Arlington, VT; sketch of plan with circulation routes, 1942, Busch-Reisinger
Museum, Harvard University Art Museums, BRGA.95.2, 22.9 22.8 cm, Graphite and colored
pencil on paper
Emerging from his role as an educator at the Bauhaus, Walter Gropius had tremendous influence on
generations of students and was a profound figure in the modern movement. A consummate collaborator,
his rational architecture was less about the object and more about social responsibilities and
industrial standardization.
Starting his life in Germany, Gropius studied architecture at the Technische Hochschule in Berlin
and Munich, finishing in 1907. That same year he began working for Peter Behrens, and three years
later he left to start his own practice. His first significant commission, assisted by Adolf Meyer, was
the façade for the Fagus factory in 1911. Predating many modernist buildings, the factory found an
appropriate industrial vocabulary with clear modern intentions. Various house projects followed,
along with the design of the industrial buildings for the Cologne Exhibition of the Deutsche
Werkbund Congress.
Combining the Higher Institute of Fine Arts and the School of Applied Arts, the Bauhaus was
formed in 1919 with Gropius as its director. He emigrated to Britain and then the United States in
the mid-1930s, when he was summoned to head the Graduate School of Architecture at Harvard.
His architectural practice often collaborated with Marcel Breuer and he was a founding member of
the firm The Architect’s Collaborative (TAC). Other projects of note, in which he had primary
responsibility, include the United States Embassy in Athens (1956) and a skyscraper for Grand Central
Station, New York City (1960) (Berdini, 1985; Fitch, 1960; Isaacs, 1991).
Drawings by Gropius reveal the rational clarity and functionalist approach of modernism (Tzonis
and Nerdinger, 1990). His drawings and sketches were most often graphite on paper, primarily
employing the conventions of plan, section, elevation, and axonometric. This sketch (Figure 7.8) is
a design for the Lovant Residence in Arlington, Vermont (1942). Although the project was never
constructed, the program specified a small house equipped with viewing windows on a ninety-acre
site (Tzonis and Nerdinger, 1990).
This plan shows circulation paths sketched in red. Obviously concerned about the material thickness
of walls, Gropius used poché to add weight to structural walls. He also differentiated the floor
surfaces by shading certain areas and crosshatching others. These visual indicators help to emphasize
that the house was to be built using local materials, fieldstone, and wood. The careful control of proportion
and the consideration for spatial relationships indicate that Gropius used this sketch for concentrated
and deliberate thinking.
The red paths are the most distinctive part of this sketch. Gropius was visually ‘walking’ his pencil
through the house, checking the efficiency and flow of the circulation. The circulation in this small
house seems particularly chaotic in the entry vestibule, where all of the paths intersect. In later versions
of the house, Gropius eliminated the ‘L’ of the kitchen and designed it as a galley space, thus simplifying
the options for circulation. The patterns of movement have been separated between public and
private. For example, the lines from the maid’s room through the kitchen to the dining table are separated
from the entry, living, and guest toilet. To further support this interpretation, a thin line starts
on the kitchen counter and ends with an arrow on the dining table (additionally indicated by the only
measurement on the sketch, ten feet). Most lines consist of single weight; conversely, the circulation
paths have been sketched over as if he was walking the possible routes several times. Gropius’ reputation
for efficiency would support a theory that he was concerned with the economical delivery of food
and the distances of travel through the space.
183