Walter Gropius was born in 1883 in Berlin to a German architect. He studied at the Technical Univerisities in Munich and Berlin and joined the company of Peter Behrens in 1910, later joining the practice of Adolph Meyer. After serving in the war Gropius joining several radical artist groups, finally becoming the Director of the Bauhaus. Gropius left the Bauhaus and resumed private practice as WWII approached, and later moved to the United States to become a professor at Harvard University. From 1938 to 1941 he worked on a group of houses with Marcel Breure and in 1945 he created "The Architect's Collaborative", which was a design team that encompassed his value of teamwork. Gropius was well known for his innovative designs that used modern materials and construction methods. He believed in industrialized and efficient buildings, he accepted standardization and mass production, and he supported the belief that team work was essential. In essence Gropius created buildings on precise math calculations and science. Gropius also introduced to the times a screen wall system that was made up of a structural steel frame, which allowed external glass walls to cover a surface uninterrupted. Gropius was an important teacher and theorist in his time and he died in Boston in 1969.
