Marcel Breuer

Updated on Nov 20, 2023

Edit

Comment

Nationality Hungarian Role Architect Occupation Architect Education Bauhaus		Design Wassily Chair Awards AIA Gold Medal Name Marcel Breuer

Full Name Marcel Lajos Breuer Born May 21, 1902 ( 1902-05-21 ) Pecs, Austria-Hungary Died July 1, 1981, New York City, New York, United States Books Buildings and projects, 1921-1961 Structures Whitney Museum of American, World Heritage Centre, Gropius House, De Bijenkorf, The 9 Cleveland Similar People Walter Gropius, Arne Jacobsen, Pier Luigi Nervi, Philip Johnson, Bernard Zehrfuss

Whitney museum x marcel breuer

Marcel Lajos Breuer ( ; 22 May 1902 – 1 July 1981), was a Hungarian-born modernist, architect, and furniture designer. Breuer extended the sculptural vocabulary he had developed in the carpentry shop at the Bauhaus into a personal architecture that made him one of the world's most popular architects at the peak of 20th-century design.

10 architects 4 marcel breuer

Life, work and inventions

Marcel Breuer Marcel Breuer Digital Archive

Known to his friends and associates as Lajkó (the diminutive of his middle name and pronounced Lye-ko), Breuer left his hometown at the age of 18 in search of artistic training and was one of the first and youngest students at the Bauhaus – a radical arts and crafts school that Walter Gropius had founded in Weimar just after the first World War. He was recognized by Gropius as a significant talent and was quickly put at the head of the Carpentry Shop. (Gropius was to remain a lifelong mentor for a man who was 19 years his junior.)

Marcel Breuer Breuer Marcel Furniture Design 19201930 The Red List

After the school had moved from Weimar to Dessau in 1925, Breuer returned from a brief sojourn in Paris to join older faculty members such as Josef Albers, Wassily Kandinsky, and Paul Klee as a Master, eventually teaching in its newly established department of architecture.

Marcel Breuer Marcel Breuer Tag ArchDaily

First recognized for his invention of bicycle-handlebar-inspired tubular steel furniture, Breuer lived off his design fees at a time in the late 1920s and early 1930s when the architectural commissions he was looking for were few and far-between. He was known to such giants as Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe, whose architectural vocabulary he was later to adapt as part of his own, but hardly considered an equal by them who were his senior by 15 and 16 years. Despite the widespread popular belief that one of the most famous of Breuer's tubular steel chairs, the Wassily Chair was designed for Wassily Kandinsky, it was not; Kandinsky admired Breuer's finished chair design, and only then did Breuer make an additional copy for Kandinsky's use in his home. When the chair was re-released in the 1960s, it was designated "Wassily" by its Italian manufacturer, who had learned that Kandinsky had been the recipient of one of the earliest post-prototype units.

Marcel Breuer Marcel Breuer Directory of Architects and Designers The Modern House

It was Gropius who assigned Breuer interiors at the 1927 Weissenhofsiedlung and led him to his first house assignment for the Harnischmachers in Wiesbaden in 1932. Sigfried Giedion extended their furniture collaboration at the Wohnbedarf in Zurich to include a furniture showroom and the great Dolderthal apartments just outside town.

Marcel Breuer Marcel Breuer 19021981 Design Architecture Yatzer

In 1936, at Gropius's suggestion, Breuer relocated to London. Breuer's departure from then Nazi Germany has led some scholars to lump him with the group of Jewish architects and artists who fled the country at that time. Although Breuer's parents were Jewish, it was only in 1981 that Christopher Wilk, preparing his Interiors book for MoMA, found his formal renunciation of the Jewish faith before the Chief Rabbi of Frankfurt in the Breuer archives at Syracuse. Breuer had declared himself as non-religious in order to marry his Bauhaus sweetheart, Marta Erps (1902-1977).

Marcel Breuer Brutalist Wonders or Blunders Architecture by Marcel Breuer Urbanist

While in London, Breuer was employed by Jack Pritchard at the Isokon company; one of the earliest proponents of modern design in the United Kingdom. Breuer designed his Long Chair as well as experimenting with bent and formed plywood. Between 1935 and 1937 he worked in practice with the English Modernist F. R. S. Yorke with whom he designed a number of houses.

Marcel Breuer robinson house marcel breuer 1947 Marcel Breuer Pinterest

In 1937, Gropius accepted the appointment as chairman of Harvard's Graduate School of Design and again Breuer followed his mentor to join the faculty in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The two men formed a partnership that was to greatly influence the establishment of an American way of designing modern houses – spread by their great collection of wartime students including Paul Rudolph, Eliot Noyes, I. M. Pei, Ulrich Franzen, John Johansen, and Philip Johnson. One of the most intact examples of Breuer's furniture and interior design work during this period is the Frank House in Pittsburgh, designed with Gropius as a Gesamtkunstwerk.

Marcel Breuer IBM Laboratory La Gaude France 1962 The Bauhaus Pinterest

Breuer broke with his father-figure, Walter Gropius, in 1941 over a very minor issue but the major reason may have been to get himself out from under the better-known name that dominated their practice. Breuer had married their secretary, Constance Crocker Leighton, and after a few more years in Cambridge, moved down to New York City (with Harry Seidler as his chief draftsman) to establish a practice that was centered there for the rest of his life.

The Geller House I of 1945 is one of the first to employ Breuer's concept of the 'binuclear' house, with separate wings for the bedrooms and for the living / dining / kitchen area, separated by an entry hall, and with the distinctive 'butterfly' roof (two opposing roof surfaces sloping towards the middle, centrally drained) that became part of the popular modernist style vocabulary. Breuer built two houses for himself in New Canaan, Connecticut: one from 1947 to 1948, and the other from 1951 to 1952. A demonstration house set up in the MoMA garden in 1949 caused a flurry of interest in the architect's work, and an appreciation written by Peter Blake. When the show was over, the "House in the Garden" was dismantled and barged up the Hudson River for reassembly on the Rockefeller property in Pocantico Hills near Sleepy Hollow. His first two important institutional buildings were the UNESCO Headquarters in Paris finished in 1955 and the monastic Master Plan and Church at St John's Abbey in Minnesota in 1954 (again, in part, on the recommendation of Gropius, a "competitor" for the job, who told the monks they needed a younger man who could finish the job.) These commissions were a turning point in Breuer's career: a move to larger projects after years of residential commissions and the beginning of Breuer's adoption of concrete as his primary medium.

Breuer designed the Washington, D.C. headquarters building for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development which was completed in 1968. While the building received some initial praise, in recent decades it has received widespread criticism. Former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Jack Kemp once described the building as "10 floors of basement." Another former Secretary, Shaun Donovan, has noted that "the building itself is among the most reviled in all of Washington—and with good reason." Many critics have argued that Breuer's design is unoriginal, and essentially mimics the UNESCO Headquarters and IBM Research Center which he designed several years earlier.

Throughout the almost 30 years and nearly 100 buildings that followed, Breuer worked with a number of partners and associates with whom he openly and insistently shared design credit: Pier Luigi Nervi at UNESCO; Herbert Beckhard, Robert Gatje, Hamilton Smith and Tician Papachristou in New York, Mario Jossa and Harry Seidler in Paris. Their contribution to his life work has largely been credited properly, though the critics and public rightly recognized a "Breuer Building" when they saw one.

Breuer's architectural vocabulary moved through at least four recognizable phases:

The white box and glass school of the International style that he adapted for his early houses in Europe and the USA: the Harnischmacher House, Gropius House, Frank House, and his own first house in Lincoln, Massachusetts.
The punctured wooden walls that characterized his famous 1948 "House in the Garden" for MoMA and a series of relatively modest houses for knowledgeable university faculty families in the 50s. This included the first of his houses in New Canaan, Connecticut, with its balcony hung off a cantilever.
The modular prefabricated concrete panel façades that first enclosed his favorite IBM Laboratory in La Gaude, France and went on to be used in many of his institutional buildings plus the whole town at Flaine. Some critics spoke of repetitiveness but Breuer quoted a professional friend: "I can’t design a whole new system every Monday morning."
The stone and shaped concrete that he used for unique and memorable commissions: his best-known project, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Muskegon and St John's Abbey Churches, the Atlanta Public Library, and his second house in New Canaan.

Breuer was awarded the Gold Medal of the American Institute of Architects at their 100th annual convention in 1968 at Portland, Oregon. In an ironic timing of events, it coincided with general criticism of one of America's favorite architects for his willingness to design a multi-story office building on top of Grand Central Station. The project was never built. It cost him many friends and supporters although its defeat by the US Supreme Court established the right of New York and other cities to protect their landmarks. During his lifetime, Breuer rarely acknowledged the influence of other architects’ work upon his own but he had certainly picked up the use of rough board-formed concrete from Le Corbusier and the noble dignity of his second New Canaan house seems to have directly descended from Mies’ Barcelona Pavilion. Shortly before his death, he told an interviewer that he considered his principal contribution to have been the adaptation of the work of older architects to the needs of modern society. He died in his apartment in Manhattan in 1981, leaving his wife Connie (died 2002), son Tom, and daughter Cesca. His partners kept offices going in his name and with his permission in Paris and New York for several years but, with their eventual retirement, each is now closed.

Chronology of Breuer's work

Breuer donated many of his professional papers and drawings to the Special Collections Research Center at the Syracuse University library beginning in the late 1960s. The remainder of his papers, including most of his personal correspondence, were donated to the Archives of American Art, Washington, D.C. between 1985 and 1999 by Breuer's wife, Constance.

At Bauhaus – Weimar and Dessau

1925 First all-tubular steel chair (the Wassily)

1925 Stool / Side Table of tubular steel (leading to cantilevered chair)

1926 Gropius, Moholy-Nagy, Kandinsky, and Muche Interiors– the Bauhaus – Dessau, Germany

1927 Piscator Apartment – Berlin, Germany

1927 Weissenhof Siedlung – Gropius and Stam Apartment Interiors – Stuttgart, Germany

1928 First cantilevered steel chair (the Cesca)

Independent practice – Berlin and Zurich

1931 Berlin Building Exhibition – "House for a Sportsman" – Berlin, Germany

1932 Harnischmacher House I – Wiesbaden, Germany

— 1954 Harnischmacher House II – Wiesbaden, Germany

1932 Wohnbedarf Furnniture Stores – Basel and Zurich, Switzerland – for Sigfried Giedion

1935 Doldertal Apartments – Zurich, Switzerland – with A and E Roth for Sigfried Giedion

With Isokon and in partnership with FRS Yorke – London

1935 Isokon Furniture Company – Plywood Tables and Stacking Chairs– London, England

— 1936 Isokon Furniture Company – Reclining Plywood Chairs– London, England

1936 Ventris Apartment in Highpoint – London, England

1936 Model for the "Civic Center of the Future" – with FRS Yorke

1936 Gane's Exhibition Pavilion – Bristol, England – with FRS Yorke

1936 Sea Lane House, East Preston, West Sussex

1938 Houses in Hampshire, Sussex, and Eton College, England – with FRS Yorke

At Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts with Gropius

1938 Gropius House – Lincoln, Massachusetts – with Walter Gropius

1938 Hagerty House – Cohasset, Massachusetts – with Walter Gropius

1939 Breuer House – Lincoln, Massachusetts – with Walter Gropius

1939 Ford House – Lincoln, Massachusetts – with Walter Gropius

1939 Frank House – Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – with Walter Gropius

1939 New York World's Fair – Pennsylvania State Exhibition –– with Walter Gropius

1940 Chamberlain Cottage – Wayland, Massachusetts – with Walter Gropius

1941 Weizenblatt House – Asheville, North Carolina – with Walter Gropius

1941 Defense Housing for Aluminum Workers – New Kensington, Pennsylvania – with Walter Gropius

Independent practice while still at Harvard

1945 Project for Serviceman's Memorial – Cambridge, Massachusetts – with Lawrence S Anderson

1945 Geller House I – Lawrence, New York

— 1969 Geller House II – Lawrence, New York – with Herbert Beckhard

1946 Tompkins House – Hewlett Harbor, New York

Independent practice in New York City with associates

1947 Breuer House – New Canaan I, Connecticut (cantilevered)

— 1951 Breuer House – New Canaan II, Connecticut (rubble stone)

1947 Mills House – New Canaan, Connecticut

1947 Ariston Club – Mar del Plata, Argentina – with Eduardo Catalano

1947 Robinson House – Williamstown, Massachusetts

1948 Kniffen House – New Canaan, Connecticut – with Eliot Noyes

1948 Scott House – Dennis, Massachusetts

1948 Thompson House – Ligonier, Pennsylvania

1949 Kepes and Breuer Cottages – Wellfleet, Massachusetts

— 1953 Edgar Stillman Cottage – Wellfleet, Massachusetts

— 1963 Wise Cottage – Wellfleet, Massachusetts

1949 Hooper House I – Baltimore, Maryland

— 1959 Hooper House II – Baltimore, Maryland – with Herbert Beckhard

1949 Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) –House in the Museum Garden –New York

— 1950 Tilley House – Red Bank, New Jersey – based upon the MoMA House

— 1950 Lauck House – Princeton, New Jersey – based upon the MoMA House

— 1950 Foote House – Chappaqua, New York – based upon the MoMA House

1950 Marshad House – Croton-on-Hudson, New York

1950 Wolfson Trailer House – Pleasant Valley, New York

1950 Clark House – Orange, Ct

1950 Englund House – Pleasantville, New York

1950 Hanson House – Huntington, New York

1950 Rufus Stillman House I – Litchfield, Connecticut

— 1965 Rufus Stillman House II – Litchfield, Connecticut – with Herbert Beckhard

— 1974 Rufus Stillman House III – Litchfield, Connecticut – with Tician Papachristou

1950 Peter and Karen McComb House – Poughkeepsie, New York

1950 Ferry Cooperative Dormitory – Vassar College – Poughkeepsie, New York

1951 Pack House – Scarsdale, New York

1951 Witalis House – Kings Point, New York

1951 Sarah Lawrence College – Arts Center – Bronxville, New York

1951 Grosse Pointe Public Library – Grosse Pointe, Michigan

1951 Abraham & Straus – Exterior Façade – Hemptead, New York

1952 Caesar Cottage – Lakeville, Connecticut

1952 Levy House – Princeton, New Jersey

1953 Torin Corp – Manufacturing Plant –Oakville, Ontario – Canada

— 1956 Torin Corp – Manufacturing Plant– Van Nuys, California – with Craig Ellwood

— 1963 Torin Corp – Machine Division– Torrington, Connecticut – with Robert Gatje

— 1964 Torin Corp – Manufacturing Plant– Nivelles, Belgium – with Hamilton Smith

— 1966 Torin Corp – Administration Building– Torrington, Connecticut – with Herbert Beckhard

— 1966 Torin Corp – Manufacturing Plant – Swindon, England – with Robert Gatje

— 1968 Torin Corp – Manufacturing Plant – Rochester, Indiana – with Robert Gatje

— 1971 Torin Corp – Technical Center – Torrington, Connecticut – with Herbert Beckhard

— 1976 Torin Corp – Manufacturing Plant– Penrith Australia –with Herbert Beckhard

1953 St John's Abbey and University – Master Plan – Collegeville, Minnesota – with Hamilton Smith

— 1955 St John's Abbey – Monastery Wing – Collegeville, Minnesota – with Hamilton Smith

— 1959 St John's University – Residence Hall I – Collegeville, Minnesota – with Hamilton Smith

— 1961 St John's Abbey – Church and Bell Banner – Collegeville, Minnesota – with Hamilton Smith

— 1966 St John's University – Library – Collegeville, Minnesota – with Hamilton Smith

— 1966 St John's University – Science Building – Collegeville, Minnesota – with Hamilton Smith

— 1967 St John's University – Residence Hall II – Collegeville, Minnesota – with Hamilton Smith

— 1968 St John's University – Ecumenical Institute – Collegeville, Minnesota – with Robert Gatje

1953 Northfield Elementary School – Litchfield, Connecticut – with O’Connor & Kilham

— 1956 Bantam Elementary School – Bantam, Connecticut – with O’Connor & Kilham

— 1956 Litchfield High School – Litchfield, Connecticut – with O’Connor & Kilham

1954 Neumann House – Croton-on-Hudson

1954 Snower House – Kansas City, Kansas – with Robert Gatje

1954 Grieco House – Andover, Massachusetts

1954 O E McIntyre, Inc – Manufacturing Plant – Westbury, New York – with William Landsberg

1954 Starkey (Alworth) House – Duluth, Minnesota – with Herbert Beckhard and Robert Gatje

1954 Gagarin House – Litchfield, Connecticut – with Herbert Beckhard

1955 Connecticut Junior Republic – Litchfield, Connecticut – with Herbert Beckhard

1956 Karsten House – Owings Mill, Maryland

1957 Laaff House – Andover, Massachusetts – with Herbert Beckhard

1957 De Bijenkorf Department Store – Rotterdam, the Netherlands – with A Elzas

1957 Institute for Advanced Study – Members’ Housing – Princeton, New Jersey – with Robert Gatje

1958 UNESCO Headquarters – Paris, France – with Pier Luigi Nervi and Bernard Zehrfuss

1958 United States Embassy – The Hague, the Netherlands

1958 Van Leer Office Building – Amstelveen, the Netherlands

1958 Staehelin House – Feldmeilen, Switzerland – with Herbart Beckhard

1958 Krieger House – Bethesda, Maryland

1959 Westchester Reform Temple – Scarsdale, New York – with William Landsberg

1960 Hunter College – Library and Administration Building – The Bronx, New York – with Robert Gatje

1959 Annunciation Priory – Convent – Bismarck, North Dakota – with Hamilton Smith

— 1968 Annunciation Priory – Mary College – Bismarck, North Dakota – with Tician Papachristou

1960 McMullen Beach House – Mantoloking, New Jersey – with Herbert Beckhard

1960 Resort Town Flaine – Master Plan – Haute-Savoie, France – with Herbert Beckhard

— since 1969 Resort Town Flaine – Over fifty buildings with Robert Gatje and Mario Jossa

1961 New York University – Dormitory and Student Center – the Bronx, New York – with Robert Gatje

— 1961 & 1970 New York University – Technology Buildings – with Hamilton Smith

1961 IBM La Gaude – Research Center – La Gaude, France – with Robert Gatje

— since 1968 IBM France Extensions – La Gaude – with Robert Gatje and Mario Jossa

1961 Kacmarcik House – St Paul, Minnesota

Practice in New York, with eventual partners

1963 Fairview Heights Apartments – Ithaca, New York – with Hamilton Smith

1966 Koerfer House – Moscia (Tessin), Switzerland – with Herbert Beckhard

1966 Whitney Museum of American Art – New York – with Hamilton Smith

1966 St Francis de Sales – Church and Rectory – Muskegon, Michigan – with Herbert Beckhard

1966 ZUP de Bayonne – Master Plan & Apartments– Bayonne, France – with Robert Gatje

1967 Laboratoires Sarget-Ambrine – Headquarters – Merignac, France – with Robert Gatje

1968 Department of HUD – Headquarters – Washington, D.C. – with Herbert Beckhard

1968 IBM – Master Plan and Manufacturing Center – Boca Raton, Florida – with Robert Gatje

— since 1970 IBM Boca Extensions – with Robert Gatje

1968 Project for Grand Central Tower – New York – with Herbert Beckhard

1969 Soriano House – Greenwich, Connecticut – with Tician Papachristou

1970 University of Massachusetts – Campus Center – Amherst, Massachusetts – with Herbert Beckhard

1970 Yale University – Becton Laboratory Building – New Haven, Connecticut – with Hamilton Smith

1970 Cleveland Museum of Art – Education Wing – Cleveland, Ohio – with Hamilton Smith

1970 Armstrong Rubber Company – Headquarters – New Haven, Connecticut – with Robert Gatje

1970 Baldegg Convent – "Mother House" – Lucerne, Switzerland – with Robert Gatje

1971 Cleveland Trust Company – Headquarters – Cleveland, Ohio – with Hamilton Smith

1971 Bryn Mawr School for Girls – Lower and Elementary – Baltimore, Maryland – with Hamilton Smith

1973 Sayer House – Glanville, France – with Mario Jossa and Robert Gatje

1974 American Press Institute – Conference Center – Reston, Virginia – with Hamilton Smith

1974 SNET – Telephone Systems Building – Torrington, Connecticut – with Hamilton Smith

1975 Grand Coulee Dam – Third Power Plant – Grand Coulee, WA – with Hamilton Smith

— 1978 Grand Coulee Dam – Visitors Arrival Center – with Hamilton Smith

1975 Mundipharma – Hqs and Mfg Bldg – Limburg, Germany – with Robert Gatje

1975 Clarksburg Harrison Public Library – Clarksburg, West Virginia – with Hamilton Smith

1976 Department of HEW – Headquarters – Washington, D.C. – with Herbert Beckhard

1977 SUNY@ Buffalo – Furnas Hall - School of Engineering and Applied Sciences – Amherst, New York – with Robert Gatje

1980 Atlanta Central Public Library – Atlanta – with Hamilton Smith

Legacy

The National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. held an exhibition dedicated to the work of Marcel Breuer titled Marcel Breuer: Design and Architecture (November 3, 2007 - February 17, 2008).

References

Marcel Breuer Wikipedia

(Text) CC BY-SA