Walter Gropius Quotations

Architecture begins where engineering ends.

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.

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

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.

Specialists are people who always repeat the same mistakes.

A modern, harmonic and lively architecture is the visible sign of an authentic democracy.

Since art is dead in the actual life of civilized nations, it has been relegated to these grotesque morgues, museums.

How can we expect our students to become bold and fearless in thought and action if we encase them in sentimental shrines feigning a culture which has long since disappeared?

However often the thread may be torn out of your hands, you must develop enough patience to wind it up again and again.

Children should be introduced right from the start to the potentialities of their environment, to the physical and psychological laws that govern the visual world, and to the supreme enjoyment that comes from participating in the creative process of giving form to one's living space.

A modern, harmonic and lively architecture is the visible sign of authentic democracy.

Society needs a good image of itself. That is the job of the architect.

Architects, painters, and sculptors must recognize anew and learn to grasp the composite character of a building both as an entity and in its separate parts. Only then will their work be imbued with the architectonic spirit which it has lost as salon art. 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.

Art itself cannot be taught, but craftsmanship can. Architects, painters, sculptors are all craftsmen in the original sense of the word. Thus it is a fundamental requirement of all artistic creativity that every student undergo a thorough training in the workshops of all branches of the crafts.

The mind is like an umbrella. Its most useful when open.

A modern building should derive its architectural significance solely from the vigour and consequence of its own organic proportions. It must be true to itself, logically transparent, and virginal of lies or trivialities.

We want to create the purely organic building, boldly emanating its inner laws, free of untruths or ornamentation.

The Bauhaus fights imitation, inferior craftsmanship and artistic dilettantism

The ultimate aim of all artistic activity is building! ... Architects, sculptors, painters, we must all get back to craft! ... The artist is a heightened manifestation of the craftsman. ... Let us form ... a new guild of craftsmen without the class divisions that set out to raise an arrogant barrier between craftsmen and artists! ... Let us together create the new building of the future which will be all in one: architecture and sculpture and painting.

Limitation makes the creative mind inventive.