This article was originally published on March 28, 2015. To read the stories behind other celebrated architecture projects, visit our AD Classics section. The Fagus Factory is one of the earliest built works of modern architecture, and the first project of Walter Gropius. The commission provided Gropius with the opportunity to put his revolutionary ideas into practice, and the stunning rectilinear volume with its primarily glazed façade would guide the course of Modernism through the coming decades. Before working on the Fagus Factory, Gropius was working under Peter Behrens, the architect who designed the AEG turbine building. Although both of the German architects were very interested in industrial architecture, their design philosophy differed. While Behrens introduced a sense of nobility to industrial architecture with the AEG building, Gropius was critical of the project and felt that it lacked authenticity with regards to the exterior design masking its construction elements. Instead, Gropius felt that exterior design should reveal the construction logic of a building. It would become his mandate to discover artistic solutions of constructing industrial buildings in a variety of contexts.
View moreView full description
