In 1919, Walter Gropius founded the Bauhaus, a school of art and architecture. The faculty and students at the Bauhaus set new standards in all art forms, particularly in architecture, painting, and photography, that are still today considered the epitome of a timeless modernist aesthetic. With the new school headquarters in Dessau, he created an architectural monument of his own. The Nazis considered the avant-garde art school, which was also strongly influenced by socialist ideas, an enemy from the very start. The Bauhaus was forced to close right after the Nazis came to power in 1933. In 1934, after a stay in England to fulfil a contract, Walter Gropius did not return to Germany, later travelling to the United States where he was able to continue his success as an architect. Naturalized as a US citizen in 1944, he returned to Germany in the 1950s and 1960s, most of all to implement construction projects for social housing in Berlin.