#the architects collaborative

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Architects Corner on Brattle Street in Cambridge.

Home offices for Sert, Gropius and TAC; and Flansburgh.

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Hanscom Elementary School (1958) in Lincoln, MA, USA, by The Architects Collaborative

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For the most part of his career Walter Gropius relied on the supporting hands of trusted partners: being more of a creative communicator than a gifted draftsman, Gropius needed sparring partners to visualize his ideas. In Adolf Meyer, Maxwell Fry, Marcel Breuer and later the partners in The Architects Collaborative Gropius found just that and thus it’s no wonder that in his introductory essay to the present volume he addresses the issue of teamwork: “The Architects Collaborative 1945-1965”, published in 1966 by Niggli, a beautifully and comprehensively illustrated retrospective of 20 years of TAC. The volume documents the considerable output of the firm as well as the great variety of projects TAC completed in just two decades, among them office buildings like the PAN-AM tower in New York, the Gropiusstadt in Berlin, churches, embassies, hospitals, libraries, hotels etc. etc. An obvious focal point of TAC was the design of schools and universities that in many examples from all over the world appear in the book and represent a bridge between Gropius’ magnum opus in Dessau and his postwar work.

A beautiful, neatly designed classic and a long overdue addition to my library.

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Thoracic Clinic (1954) in Boston, MA, USA, by The Architects Collaborative

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Howlett House (1948) in Belmont, MA, USA, by The Architects Collaborative

[germanpostwarmodern]

After graduating from TH München the German Arnold Körte went to study at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, an unusually international move for someone from his generation. From 1962 until 1964 he also worked in Walter Gropius’s American firm The Architects Collaborative (TAC) and gained lasting first-hand insights into the inner functioning of the firm, insights he shared in his book „Begegnungen mit Walter Gropius in The Architects Collaborative TAC”, published in 2019 by Gebr. Mann Verlag. The 1960s and 1970s certainly were TAC’s most successful decades during which the office realized projects all over the world. Körte reflects on the working methods present at TAC and which involved great deals of freedom for each employee as well as the somewhat annoying sub-princedoms of each partner. The partners’ projects were only discussed coram publico once a week during the jour fixes in which Gropius according to Körte showed his greatest talents: to bridge differences, to moderate ideas and to philosophize directions in architecture. Körte’s eyewitness account is a real page-turner (unfortunately only available in German) that addresses an under-represented topic in the Bauhaus hagiography, namely Gropius’s years in the USA and how he changed over there: remarkably the notoriously egoistic „German“ Gropius in the US transformed into a dedicated team player who established a collaborative in which the individual receded into the collective. A very entertaining little book!

[archiveofaffinities]

The Architects Collaborative, CIGNA Headquarters, Bloomfield, Connecticut, 1979-1984

[germanpostwarmodern]

New in: Arnold Körte‘s eyewitness account „Begegnungen mit Walter Gropius in The Architects Collaborative TAC”, published not long ago by Gebr. Mann Verlag. After graduating from TH München Körte went to study at Harvard’s GSD from 1962 until 1964 worked in Gropius’s American firm The Architects Collaborative (a connection he was to keep also in the years following as a freelancer). The 1960s and 1970s certainly were TAC’s most successful decades during which the office realized projects all over the world. Körte reflects on the working methods of TAC which involved great deals of freedom for each employee but also sub-princedoms of the partners. The partners’ projects were only discussed coram publico during the weekly jour fixes in which Gropius according to Körte showed his greatest talents: to bridge differences, to moderate ideas and to philosophize directions in architecture. Körte’s book is a real page-turner (I finished in two evenings) and addresses an under-represented topic in the Bauhaus centenary, namely Walter Gropius’s years in the USA. It is still remarkable that the, as Bernd Polster in his biography described him, egotistical „German“ Gropius in the US transformed into a dedicated team player who established a collaborative in which the individual receded into the collective. A highly entertaining and important little book!