Marcel Breuer
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Marcel Lajos Breuer | |
Personal Information | |
---|---|
Name | Marcel Lajos Breuer |
Nationality | Hungarian |
Birth date | 21st May 1902 |
Birth place | Pécs, Hungary |
Date of death | 1st July 1981 |
Place of death | New York City, USA |
Working Life | |
Significant Buildings | The Geller House I,
UNESCO headquarters |
Significant Projects | Wassily Chair |
Marcel Lajos Breuer (May 21, 1902 Pécs, Hungary – July 1, 1981 New York City), architect and furniture designer, was an influential modernist. One of the fathers of Modernism, Breuer showed a great interest in modular construction and simple forms.
Known as Lajkó, Breuer studied and taught at the Bauhaus in the 1920s, stressing the combination of art and technology, and eventually became the head of the carpentry shop there. He later practiced in Berlin, designing houses and commercial spaces, as well as a number of tubular metal furniture pieces, replicas of which are still in production today.
Breuer may be best known for his design of the Wassily Chair, the first tubular bent-steel chair, designed in 1925 for Wassily Kandinsky and inspired in part by bicycle handlebars. Still in production, the chair can be assembled and disassembled most easily with bicycle tools.
In the 1930's, due to the rise of the Nazi party in Germany, Breuer relocated to London. While in London, Breuer was employed by Jack Pritchard at the Isokon company; one of the earliest introducers of modern design to the United Kingdom. Breuer designed his Long Chair as well as experimenting with bent and formed plywood. Breuer eventually ended up in the United States. He taught at Harvard's architecture school, working with students such as Philip Johnson and Paul Rudolph who later became well-known U.S. architects. (At one point Johnson called Breuer "a peasant Mannerist".) At the same time, Breuer worked with old friend and Bauhaus colleague Walter Gropius, also at Harvard, on the design of several houses in the Boston area.
Breuer dissolved his partnership with Gropius in May 1941 and established his own firm in New York. The Geller House I of 1945 is 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. A demonstration house set up in the MOMA garden in 1949 caused a new flurry of interest in the architect's work, and an appreciation written by Peter Blake.
The 1953 commission for UNESCO headquarters in Paris was a turning point for Breuer: a return to Europe, a return to larger projects after years of only residential commissions, and the beginning of Breuer's adoption of concrete as his primary medium. He became known as one of the leading practitioners of Brutalism, with an increasingly curvy, sculptural, personal idiom. Windows were often set in soft, pillowy depressions rather than sharp, angular recesses. Many architects remarked at his ability to make concrete appear "soft".
Breuer is sometimes incorrectly credited, or blamed, for the former Pan Am Building (now the MetLife Building), a high-rise in New York City considered to be unpopular. The Pan Am was actually credited to Walter Gropius. In 1969 Breuer developed a 30-story proposed skyscraper over Grand Central Terminal, called "Grand Central Tower", which Ada Louise Huxtable called 'a gargantuan tower of aggressive vulgarity', and became a cause celebre. Breuer's reputation was damaged, but the legal fallout improved the climate for landmark building preservation in New York City and across the United States.
Contents |
[edit] Works (partial list)
[edit] Private residential buildings (U.S.)
- Hagerty House, Cohasset, MA. 1937-1938
- Breuer House I, Lincoln, MA. 1938-1939
- J. Ford House, Lincoln, MA. 1939
- Chamberlain Cottage, Wayland, MA. 1940
- Geller House, Lawrence, Long Island, NY. 1945
- Robinson House, Williamstown, MA. 1946-1948
- Breuer House II, New Canaan, CT. 1947-1948
- Cape Cod Cottages
- Breuer Cottage, Wellfleet, MA. 1945-1949-1961
- Kepes Cottage, Wellfleet, MA. 1948-1949
- Edgar Stillman Cottage, Wellfleet, MA. 1953-1954
- Wise Cottage, Wellfleet, MA. 1963
- Exhibition Houise in the MoMA Garden, Pocantico Hills, Tarrytown, NY. 1948-1949
- Clark House, Orange, CT. 1949-1951
- Pack House, Scarsdale, NY. 1950-1951
- Dexter Ferry Cooperative House of Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY. 1951
- Grieco House, Andover, MA. 1954-1955
- Starkey House, Duluth, MN, 1954-1955
- Hooper House II, Baltimore County, MD. 1956-1959
- Stillman House II, Litchfield, CT. 1964-1965
[edit] Public / commercial buildings
- New York University (now Bronx Community College) University Heights Campus, Bronx, New York
- Begrisch (Lecture) Hall. 1964
- Gould Hall of Technology (now Polowczek Hall). 1964
- Colston (Residence) Hall
- Tech I & II (now Meister Hall)
- Wohnbedarf Furniture Store, Zurich.
- Doldertal Houses (apartment blocks), Zurich.
- Gane Pavilion, Bristol. 1936
- Pennsylvania Pavilion, New York's World Fair. 1939
- Aluminum City Terrace housing project, New Kensington, Pennsylvania. 1942-1944
- UNESCO headquarters, Paris, France. 1953 (with Pier Luigi Nervi and Bernard Zehrfuss).
- The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY. 1966
- HUD office building, Washington, D.C.
- Bryn Mawr School lower school building, Baltimore, MD. 1970s.
- Litchfield High School, Litchfield, Conn.
- Cleveland Museum of Art expansion, Cleveland, Ohio.
- AT Tower, Cleveland, Ohio.
- Flaine, France. (the entire ski resort town, population 6000)
- Campus Center and Garage, University of Massachusetts Amherst. 1965/69
- St. John's University in Collegeville, Minnesota
- Saint Thomas Hall. 1959
- St. John's Abbey Church. 1961
- Alcuin Library. 1964
- Peter Engel Science Center. 1965
- Saints Bernard, Patrick, and Boniface Halls. 1967
- Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural Research. 1968
- Bush Center for the Hill Monastic Manuscript Library. 1975
- Australian Embassy in Paris (consulting architect). 1973
- IBM Campus in Boca Raton, Florida.
- St. Francis de Sales Parish - Muskegon, MI[1]
[edit] Furniture
- African chair
- Sun Lounge Chair, Model No. 301
- Dressing Table & Bureau. 1922, 1925
- Slatted chairs (wood). 1922–24
- Wassily Chair No.B3. 1925
- Laccio Tables, small & large. 1927
- Wassily chair, folding. 1927
- Cesca Chair & Armchair. 1928
- Thornet Typist’s Desk. 1928
- Coffee Table. 1928
- Tubular steel furniture. 1928–29
- F 41 lounge chair on wheels. 1928–30
- Broom Cupboard. 1930
- Bookcase. 1931
- Armchair, Model No.301. 1932–34
- Aluminium chair. 1933
- Isokon chairs. 1935
- Aluminium chaise longue. 1935–36
- Plywood furniture (five pieces). 1936–37
- Robin Day Polyprop chairs. 1962–63
- Robin Day Polo Chair. 1975
[edit] External links
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