No one has had a more pervasive influence on modern design than Walter Gropius. An architect with surprisingly few buildings to show for his 69 years, Gropius has devoted himself mainly to teaching. He headed Germany's Bauhaus ("Building House") from 1919 to 1928, made the school a seedbed of new designs. Since 1938 he has directed Harvard University's department of architecture, graduated hundreds of dedicated moderns.
Last week Boston honored Gropius with a big retrospective show of his architecture. Included were models of his glass-walled Bauhaus (done in 1926) and Harvard's new graduate...