Jonathan Emmesedi𧡠1/3
Fiona MacCarthy's "Gropius : The Man Who Built the Bauhaus" is rewarding reading not just for those interested in architecture and design but for anybody trying to get to grips with the cultural history of the first half of the twentieth century.
MacCarthy is determined to dispel the hostile caricature promulgated by Tom Wolfe and other antimodernists of Gropius as a planner of the subordination of the human to a soulless, mechanized modernity.
Instead, MacCarthy argues, Gropius was an heir of William Morris in his passionate conviction that architecture and design can incorporate not just the conveniences of technology but also the values of art into our modern lives.
For MacCarthy, the fruits of this passion are to be found in the work of Gropius as an architectural educator and thinker as much as -- or perhaps even more so than -- in the actual buildings he designed.
As the prime mover of the Bauhaus, the legacy of Gropius lives on not just in the initiation of students of art and design by means of a foundation course or in the contents of an IKEA flatpack, but also in holding out for "experiment, delight, and the meaning of our choices in the things we choose to live with."
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