Bauhaus Internationalism to College Town Modernism: Exploring Bauhaus Culture in Hajjar’s Hybrid Architecture

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to analyze William Hajjar’s single-family houses in State College, PA, and compare them with the European modernist work of Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer in the United States. This analysis is performed using shape grammars as a computational design methodology. Hajjar was a member of the architecture faculty at the Pennsylvania State University, a practitioner in State College, and an influential figure in the history of architecture in the area. Shape grammars are used specifically to verify and describe the influences of Bauhaus/European modernism on Hajjar’s domestic architecture. The focus is on establishing Hajjar’s single-family architectural language and comparing it to the architectural language of Gropius (Gropius-Breuer partnership) as the founder of the Bauhaus architecture and a prominent practitioner in introducing European modernism to American architecture students in the mid-twentieth century like Hajjar.