Walter Groupius: An Illustrated Biography published by Phaidon. Walter Gropius (18 May 1883 – 5 July 1969) was a German-American architect and founder of the Bauhaus School in Wiemar in 1919. He designed the Bauhaus building in Dessau, opening in 1926 (pictured above). Along with Alvar Aalto, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright, Gropius is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of modernist architecture. Isokon are re-issuing the Isokon Occasional Table that was originally designed by Walter Gropius in 1936, please see below.