Walter Gropius Quotes

Author Image

Walter Gropius

Profession : Architect

Birth : May 18, 1883

Together let us desire, conceive, and create the new structure of the future, which will embrace architecture and sculpture and painting in one unity and which will one day rise toward Heaven from the hands of a million workers like the crystal symbol of a new faith.

Walter Gropius

We are in the midst of a momentous catastrophe of world history, of a transformation of all aspects of life and of the entire inner human being This is perhaps fortunate for the artistic person, if he is strong enough to bear the consequences, because what we need is the courage to have inner experience.

Walter Gropius

Our guiding principle was that design is neither an intellectual nor a material affair, but simply an integral part of the stuff of life, necessary for everyone in a civilized society.

Walter Gropius

Good architecture should be a projection of life itself, and that implies an intimate knowledge of biological, social, technical, and artistic problems.

Walter Gropius

Proficiency in a craft is essential to every artist. Therein lies the prime source of creative imagination. Let us then create a new guild of craftsmen without the class distinctions that raise an arrogant barrier between craftsman and artist!

Walter Gropius

Let us together create the new building of the future, which will be everything in one form: architecture and sculpture and painting.

Walter Gropius

I am livid with rage, sitting here in chains through this mad war which kills any meaning of life... My nerves are shattered and my mind darkened.

Walter Gropius

Specialists are people who always repeat the same mistakes.

Walter Gropius

The problem of the minimum dwelling is that of establishing the elementary minimum of space, air, light, and heat required by man in order that he be able to fully develop his life functions without experiencing limitations due to his dwelling, i.e. a minimum modus vivendi in place of a modus non moriendi.

Walter Gropius

The ultimate aim of all creative activity is the building!

Walter Gropius

The mere drawing and painting world of the pattern designer and the applied artist must become a world that builds again.

Walter Gropius

Theo van Doesburg wanted to teach in the Bauhaus in 1922. I refused, however, to appoint him since I considered him to be too aggressive and too rigidly theoretical: he would have wrought havoc in the Bauhaus through his fanatic attitude, which ran counter to my own broader approach.

Walter Gropius

New synthetic substances - steel, concrete, glass - are actively superseding the traditional raw materials of construction.

Walter Gropius

Overwhelmed by the miraculous potentialities of the machine, our human greed has interfered with the biological cycle of human companionship which keeps the life of a community healthy.

Walter Gropius

We must forget the prewar time, which was totally different. The sooner we adjust ourselves to the new, changed world, to its new, albeit harsh, beauties, the sooner will each individual be able to find his own personal happiness. The distress of Germany will spiritualize and deepen us.

Walter Gropius

Only work which is the product of inner compulsion can have spiritual meaning.

Walter Gropius

If your contribution has been vital there will always be somebody to pick up where you left off, and that will be your claim to immortality.

Walter Gropius

The Bauhaus strives to bring together all creative effort into one whole, to reunify all the disciplines of practical art - sculpture, painting, handicrafts, and crafts - as inseparable components of a new architecture.

Walter Gropius

The ultimate, if distant, aim of the Bauhaus is the unified work of art - the great structure - in which there is no distinction between monumental and decorative art.

Walter Gropius

The greatest responsibility of the planner and architect, I believe, is the protection and development of our habitat.

Walter Gropius