Fagus Factory

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The Fagus Factory

The Fagus Factory (German: Fagus Fabrik or Fagus Werk) was constructed between 1911 and 1913 in Alfeld on the Leine in Germany. It was designed by the architects Walter Gropius and Adolf Meyer. It is said to be an important example of early modernist architecture.

The plan of the factory had already been designed when Gropius came to the project, and so his contribution was to the exterior. Using a reinforced concrete construction recessed behind the facade allowed the elevations to contain large windows with an emphasis on horizontality, separated by narrow horizontal bands of sheet metal. Small opaque areas were constructed in plain yellow brickwork.

Nikolaus Pevsner writes in Pioneers of Modern Design:-

"For the first time a complete facade is conceived in glass. The supporting piers are reduced to narrow mullions of brick. The corners are left without any support, a treatment which has since been imitated over and over again. The expression of the flat roof has also changed. Only in the buildings by Adolf Loos which was done one year before the Fagus Factory, have we seen the same feeling for the pure cube. Another exceedingly important quality of Gropius's building is that, thanks to the large expanses of clear glass, the usual hard separation of exterior and interior is annihilated.