Marcel Lajos Breuer
B. 1902 Hungary
D. 1981 New York

Architect and furniture designer, Marcel Breuer studied and taught at the Bauhaus in the 1920s and later practiced in Berlin where he designed houses and commercial spaces. One of the fathers of Modernism, Breuer used new technologies and new materials in order to develop his “International Style” of work and became one of the greatest architects and furniture designers of the 20th century.  Many of his tubular metal furniture pieces have been replicated and are still in production today—the most widely recognized is the Wassily Chair, designed in 1925.

 

In the 1930s Breuer traveled to London to escape the Nazi party in Germany and eventually came to the United States. At Harvard’s architecture school he taught students such as Philip Johnson and Paul Rudolph who later became well-known American architects.   Breuer also worked with his Bauhaus colleague Walter Gropius to design several houses in the Boston area.  In 1941, Breuer ended his partnership with Gropius and began his own firm in New York. In 1947 the Museum of Modern Art in New York ran a touring exhibition of Breuer's work and in 1948 asked him to design a low-cost house on the grounds of the museum, which was targeted at the average American family.  He filled the house with plywood cutout furniture. Breuer is known for the 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.

 

In 1953, Breuer received the commission for UNESCO headquarters in Paris.  This was the beginning of his adoption of concrete as his primary medium.  He became known for his use of an increasingly curvy, sculptural, personal style.  Among his many designs, Breuer is credited for the Geller House, Lawrence, NY; Begrish Hall, Gould Hall of Technology, Colston Hall, and Tech 1 & 11—all at New York University (now Bronx Community College) University Heights Campus, Bronx, NY; Cleveland Museum of Art (expansion), Cleveland, Ohio; Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC; and the Bryn Mawr School Lower School complex, Baltimore, MD.

 

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