Do architects make good theorists?

Introduction

This paper is a brief debate on the topic “Do architects make good theorists?” In order to present an interactive discussion on this topic the personality of Walter Gropius has been selected as reference. The assertions made in this paper are an outcome of a research conducted on this topic by considering the theories and works of Walter Gropius in the field of Architecture.

Discussion

The topic of this paper's discussion is quite subjective and in the composer's opinion an architect can be a good theorist. To support this assertion the personality of Walter Gropius is discussed with reference to the aspects of his life and work demonstrating his personality as a good theorist and architect simultaneously.

Personality overview:

Dr Walter Gropius, the architect, who died in Boston at the age of 86, had been for many years one of the major world forces working towards an architecture that acknowledged and exploited modern technology. With his master, Peter Behrens, with Le Corbusier in France, Aalto in Finland, and Frank Lloyd Wright in the United States he may be classed as one of the most influential architects of modern times: and his influence was spread not only by example but by precept issuing from the Bauhaus at Dessau, that great institution which combined all the crafts in one philosophic unity and brought the work of the artist into the closest association with industry (Kornberger & Clegg, Pp. 1095-1114).

Gropius was nevertheless always on his guard against abstract terms like 'functionalism' (which he did not scruple to call 'catchwords'), and deprecated the propaganda which would make the new architecture a fashion 'as snobbish as any of the older academic fashions which it aims to displace'. His attitude was based not only on the frank acceptance and full exploitation of steel, glass, and reinforced concrete but on the realization that the day of the individual craftsman was done. He regarded the craftsman's role, in the modern industrial age, as that of creating well conceived and serviceable building components capable of being multiplied in quantity by mass production.

This great architectural philosopher and teacher were driven from his own country by the Nazi regime. Germany's loss might have been England's gain, for Gropius lived and worked among us for three years, but in the end it was America which offered him a post consonant with his status, the Chair of Architecture at Harvard.

Major architecture works and contributions:

Walter Gropius is famous for building the Bauhaus art school that became an internationally known movement between the years 1919 and 1928. The construction of Bauhaus building began in autumn, 1925, and finished in December 1926, was a triumphant vindication of the principles of its architect and of the lines on which he had educated the students who worked on it. The whole of its interior decorations and fittings were produced in its own workshops (Markus & Cameron, Pp. 45-87).

At Dessau, as at Weimar, Gropius encountered vigorous and often ill-informed criticism from official bodies, craft organizations and so forth, and ...