Walter Gropius (1883-1969) set out to build for the future. As the founding director of the Bauhaus, the Berlin-born architect had an inestimable influence on our aesthetic environment, championing a bold new hybrid of light, geometry, and industrial design, as dazzling today as it was a century ago. In this essential architect introduction, we survey Gropius' evolution and influence with 20 of his most significant projects, from the Bauhaus Building in Dessau, Germany, to the Chicago Tribune Tower and Harvard University Graduate Center, completed after Gropius's exodus to the United States in 1937. We explore his role both as an architectural practitioner, and as a writer and educator, not only as a Bauhaus pioneer, but also, along with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, as a leading proponent of the International Style. Along the way, we see how many of Gropius's tenets remain benchmarks for architects, designers, and urbanists today. Whether in his emphasis on a functional beauty or his interest in housing and city planning, Gropius astounds in the agility of his thinking as much as in the luminous precision of his work. About the series Born back in 1985, the Basic Art Series has evolved into the best-selling art book collection ever published. Each book in TASCHEN's Basic Architecture series features: an introduction to the life and work of the architect the major works in chronological order information about the clients, architectural preconditions as well as construction problems and resolutions a list of all the selected works and a map indicating the locations of the best and most famous buildings approximately 120 illustrations (photographs, sketches, drafts, and plans)

Not only Adolf Hitler and Hermann Goering utilized the occupation of France during the Second World War to procure artworks for their collections - German museums also made acquisitions at the time. The advantageous foreign exchange rate and the large range of artworks, for instance, from seized Jewish property, afforded favorable opportunities. French museums like the Louvre also expanded their holdings during this time. Many purchases by German museums were restituted to France in the postwar period, while some have remained in the collections until today and are first now becoming a focus of research. The essays in the volume from German and French perspectives analyze the similarities and differences in the activities of museums on the French art market during the occupation for the first time. Adolf Hitler et Hermann Goering ne sont pas les seuls a avoir profite de l'Occupation de la France par l'Allemagne pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale pour acquerir des oeuvres d'art pour leurs collections - les musees allemands y ont egalement fait des acquisitions. Le taux de change avantageux et l'offre importante d'oeuvres d'art provenant par exemple de proprietes juives spoliees ont offert des opportunites favorables. Les musees francais, comme le Louvre, ont egalement elargi leurs collections a cette epoque. De nombreuses acquisitions de musees allemands ont ete restituees a la France dans l'apres-guerre, mais certaines sont restees dans les collections jusqu'a ce jour et n'ont attire l'attention des chercheurs que recemment. Les contributions de ce volume analysent pour la premiere fois, des points de vue francais et allemand, les points communs et les differences entre les activites des musees sur le marche de l'art francais pendant l'Occupation.

Despite efforts by a reunited Germany to regulate "pending property issues", cultural heritage institutions are still having to address questions of museum ethics: Is it right that nationalized property dating from 1945-1990 forms part of public collections? What kinds of dispossessions took place? Who were those involved? When and under what circumstances did the objects make their way into public collections? From where? These questions are of cross-border interest. Confiscated private collections and items of uncertain origin from the "Museumsfonds der DDR" (East Germany's museum stock), were exchanged for foreign currency on the international art market. One of the functions of the German Lost Art Foundation is to investigate the confiscations of cultural goods in the Soviet Occupation Zone and East Germany, an area of research it has been facilitating since 2017.