How did Peter Behrens influence Walter Gropius’s approach to modern architecture?

Walter Gropius’s approach to modern architecture was significantly shaped by his time in the office of Peter Behrens, where he worked between 1907 and 1910. This experience influenced Gropius in several key ways:1

• Interrelationship of the Arts: Gropius credited his work with Behrens and the design challenges he faced for a German electricity company with fostering his lifelong interest in progressive architecture and the integration of the arts.1
• Art and Technology: Through Behrens, Gropius became involved with the Deutscher Werkbund, an organization that advocated for a "marriage between art and technology." This encouraged Gropius to believe that artistically trained designers could "breathe a soul into the dead product of the machine".12
• Industrial Design: Behrens’s role as an artistic adviser for AEG—where he exercised total control over a designed environment, from corporate identity to factory architecture—provided a model for Gropius’s own career, which later included both large-scale architectural projects and smaller industrial designs.34

Ultimately, these experiences helped Gropius develop a commitment to organizational talent and a philosophy that sought to elevate the design of machine-made products for a new age.14