MARCEL LAJOS BREUER

(22 May 1902 1 July 1981)

A Hungarian-born
modernist, architect and
furniture designer.

Breuer is best known as one of

the early 20th century's most
influential furniture designers.
Equally influential were the
private houses he designed on
the post-war East Coast and the
UNESCO headquarters in Paris.
His innovative laminated wood
furniture and his unique
architectural interpretation of
light and space yielded a great
deal of international respect.

INDEX
Personal Life
Early Works
Life Post-Bauhaus
Master Works

Breuers Architectural Vocabular

Awards and Recognition
Other Major Works

Personal Life
Left his hometown at the age of 18 in
search of artistic training.

Breuer with his friends

at the Bauhaus

In 1920, he joined the Bauhaus a

radical arts and crafts school.
Here he was under the mentorship
of Walter Gropius.
He was recognized by Gropius as a
significant talent and was quickly put
Walter Gropius at the head of the Carpentry Shop.

EARLY
WORKS

One of the earliest works by

Marcel Breuer in collaboration
with the weaver Gunta Stlzl.
It was made of painted wood with
a colourful textile oak weave. The
seat and back of the chair
employs a woven textile.
There is no information available
on the originally intended use of
the chair.

The African Chair

This chair embodies the spirit of
the early Bauhaus like no other
object.

Wood-slat chair was originally

designed in 1922.
Breuer's design was based on
anatomical research to support
the heaviest bones of the human
body in maximum comfort.
The design was influenced by
the abstract aesthetic of De Stijl,
the Dutch art movement.

Wood-Slat
Chair

One of his first projects at the Bauhaus

was the steel club armchair
This was inspired both by constructivist
aesthetics and by the handlebars of his
new bike.
Unusually light and easy to assemble
from ready-made steel tubes, the chair
was the result of Breuer's years of
experiments with bending steel and was
immediately hailed as an important
breakthrough in furniture design.
It was made from extruded nickel-plated
tubular steel.

Wassily Armchair

An important breakthrough
in furniture design

The Bauhaus designers called

it "the abstract chair".
The chair was innovative in
that it was extremely light, and
was built entirely from readymade tubes that were welded
together.
It was later renamed the
Wassily, after the Bauhaus
teacher
I Wassily
thought Kandinsky.
that this out of all my work would earn me the most
criticism, but the opposite of what I expected came true.

In 1924, Breuer left the Bauhaus for Paris

where he worked as an architect
He co-founded a company Standard-Mbel to
manufacture his tubular steel furniture,
although running it proved much trickier than
he had thought
When Gropius moved to the US in 1937 to
become professor of architecture at Harvard,
Breuer joined him, soon becoming a professor
too.
Together they formed an architectural practice
which began by building their own homes as
two storey villas made from glass, natural
wood and stone rubble.

Life Post Bauhaus

In 1946, Breuer left Harvard and

opened an office in New York where
his first partner was the industrial
designer Eliot Noyes.

House of the future!

Breuers first building to be

completed after war was the
Geller House was located at on
Long Island
The spacious, airy wooden
structure was hailed as the "house
of the future" by the press.

The Geller House Long

Island

Breuers plan for the house was

termed 'binuclear', since it
separates the living-dining-kitchen
area from the sleeping area.
The two wings of the house are
connected by an entrance hallway.
The house and the adjacent guest
house have 'butterfly roofs' which
slope inward and are centrally
drained.

Although Breuer concentrated on architecture for rest of his career

he still designed furniture for occasional projects .

He built and furnished an

exhibition house in 1949 for the
Museum of Modern Art, New York.
For that project, he developed
the innovative cut-out plywood
MoMA Chair made from a single
board

BREUER :MASTER
WORKS

UNESCO headquarters in Paris

In 1953 Breuer won the competition to design the
UNESCO headquarters in Paris with Pier Luigi Nervi, the
brilliant Italian structural engineer, and the French
architect Bernard Zehrfuss.

Whitney Museum of
American Art
Located in the New York City, it is one of
the most popular works of Breuer
It is a striking granite building at the
southeast corner of Madison Avenue and
75th Street.
Considered somber, heavy, and even brutal
at the time of its completion in 1966
Breuers building is now recognized as
daring, strong, and innovative.

Bijenkorff department store in Rotterdam.

During the Rotterdam
Blitz of 14 May 1940
the original Bijenkorff
building was largely
destroyed.
The renewed, current
Beehive structure was
designed by Breuer
and much
appreciated.
The sculpture in the
corner was called the

Breuers Architectural
Vocabulary

Breuers architectural vocabulary moved through at least

four recognizable phases

1. The white box and glass school of the International style

Marianne
Harnishmacher in her
living room

Harnischmacher House in Wiesbaden, Germany, designed by Marcel Breuer,

1932
He adapted this for his early houses in Europe and the USA: the Harnischmacher
House, Gropius House, Frank House, and his own first house in Lincoln, Massachusetts.

2. The punctured
wooden walls

His famous House in the Garden - A demonstration house set up in the

MOMA garden in 1949 caused a flurry of interest in the architect's work.
A series of relatively modest houses for knowledgeable university faculty
families in the 50s and the first of his houses in New Canaan, Conneticut,
with its balcony hung off a cantilever had punctured wooden walls.

3. The modular
prefabricated
concrete panel
facades
BREUERS favorite IBM Laboratory in La Gaude, France.
This 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 cant
design a whole new system every Monday morning.

4. The stone and shaped concrete

He used this for unique and memorable commissions: his best-known

project, Whitney Museum of American Art, the Muskeegon and St Johns
Abbey Churches, the Atlanta Public Library, and his second house in New
Canaan.

Awards and
Recognitions
In the year 1968, Breuer won the
AIAs Gold Medal awarded by the
American Institute of Architects
conferred in recognition of a can
significant body of work of lasting
influence on the theory and practice
of architecture.

In that same year, he won the first

Jefferson Foundation Medal that cited
him among all the living architects
of the world as excelling all others in
the quality of his work.

Other Major Works

Robert C. Weaver Federal Building
Located at 451 Seventh Street, SW, Washington, DC, is a ten
story federal office building .The building was constructed for
the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Cesca- Cantilever
chair

The Frank House

Cesca chair was named after his
daughter.
The design is seemingly inspired
by Mies Van der Rohe a German
American architect

'Perhaps we might create a little jewel

Breuer commenting on the Annunciation
Priory project

Flaine Hotel, the ski

resort town France

The Athlete, sculpture Warner Palaestra Recreation Center

Marcel Breuer retired in 1976 and died on the 1st of July 1981 after a long illness.

Breuer is seen as one of the forefathers of the energetic aesthetic of uninhibited

experimentation combined with a high standard of artistry.
The work of this Hungarian-born, German-trained designer-turned-architect came
to typify an affluent, enlightened style of mid-20th century East Coast residential
architecture.

THANK
YOU !

Submitted By
Arunima V J
Roll No : 134205007