Marcel Breuer

• Born: May 21, 1902
• Birthplace: Pécs, Austro-Hungarian Empire (now in Hungary)
• Died: July 1, 1981
• Place of death: New York, New York

Hungarian-born architect and designer

An architect and furniture designer, Breuer trained and taught at the Bauhaus in Weimar, Germany, and then practiced in Berlin and Paris. Adolf Hitler’s rise to power forced Breuer to immigrate first to England and then to the United States.

Area of achievement: Architecture and design

Early Life

Marcel Breuer (MAHR-sehl BROY-ur) was born in 1902 in what is now Hungary. After an unhappy brief stint at the fine arts school in Vienna, he became a student at the Bauhaus in Weimar, Germany, soon after its founding. He later taught there and would remain in close contact with the school’s first director, Walter Gropius, for much of his life. Like Gropius, Breuer believed firmly in the principles upon which the workshop was founded: simplicity of style, attention to context and function, and a willingness to break with established models and practices. After a brief stint in England, Breuer followed Gropius to Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, where Breuer taught for a decade, from 1937 to 1946, and continued to develop his work. Hoping to bolster his reputation, Breuer eventually broke with his partner, left academia, and established a firm in New York. Having made a name for himself at a young age, Breuer became renowned in the 1950’s and 1960’s, as the international style and the architectural modernism at which he excelled were integrated into American life and culture. The economic recession of the early 1970’s and the beginnings of postmodernism led to a waning of Breuer’s reputation, although his importance to the canon of world architecture remains unquestioned. As a young man, Breuer formally renounced Judaism; however, along with that of many of his colleagues, his life was permanently affected by World War II and by his position as an émigré.

Life’s Work

During his lifetime, Breuer designed and built single-family houses, college dormitories, department stores, museums, and a range of civic, governmental and religious buildings. Cantilevering, the use of split levels, and, in terms of materials, the use of concrete were all hallmarks of his work in both architecture and design; flat roofs, expansive unbroken planes, and rectilinear rooms and modules are also important features of Breuer’s work. These are expressed in his work on the headquarters of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in Paris, the U.S. Embassy in The Hague, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and a significant number of religious, educational, and residential buildings in the United States, Europe, and Asia. In addition to these significant buildings, Breuer designed St. John’s Abbey Church in Collegeville, Minnesota; the members’ housing building at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University; and the Gropius and Breuer houses in Lincoln, Massachusetts, both of which highlight uniformity in design. Breuer was noted for his signature “Wassily” and “Cesca” chairs, which incorporated steel, cane, and leather in simple but elegant streamlined forms. Breuer died of a heart condition in 1981 at the age of seventy-nine.

Significance

Together with such theorists and practitioners as Philip Johnson, Louis Kahn, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, and others, Breuer helped distinguish the mid-twentieth century as a hotbed of new ideas in architecture. Although their practices and styles differed, these men shared a belief in the potential value of architecture to society, in the connections between aesthetics and social and private life, and in the integration of design into all areas of society. Accordingly, Breuer believed strongly in detail, in craftsmanship, and in new developments in city planning and public housing. Unlike many of his peers, Breuer maintained a respect for local traditions and a willingness to study local and contextual needs in depth. In New England, for example, Breuer was swayed by the plainness and harmony of the vernacular; in Minnesota, working with the Benedictine community, he was impressed by the fervency and integrity of the monastery’s aims and way of life. Most critics consider the residential (single-family) houses to be Breuer’s best work, noting that his originality is more in evidence there than in his public and commercial buildings.

Bibliography

Driller, Joachim. Marcel Breuer Houses, 1923-1973. Translated by Mark Cole and Jeremy Verrinder, edited by Mark Jarzombek. London: Phaidon, 2000. Driller’s work discusses Breuer’s residential houses in detail. Distinctive features, including binuclearity, balloon frames, and the use of natural materials, are mentioned.

Gatje, Robert F. Marcel Breuer: A Memoir. New York: Monacelli Press, 2000. A memoir by one of Breuer’s former partners in New York.

Hyman, Isabelle. Marcel Breuer, Architect: The Career and the Buildings. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2001. In this major overview of Breuer’s career, the author details the chronology of Breuer’s professional life, focusing in particular on his life after World War II. A substantial number of color plates and reproductions of plans (of projects built and unbuilt) are included.

Vitra Design Museum. Marcel Breuer: Design and Architecture. Translated by Jeffrey Lieber, Ian Pepper, and Julia Thorson, edited by Alexander von Vegesack and Mathias Remmele. Weil am Rhein, Germany: Vitra Design Shiftung, 2003. This exhibition catalog contains critical articles and reminiscences, some of which consider the varied receptions of Breuer (and his legacy) in Europe and the United States, his place within architectural modernism and the history of architecture, and his efforts to build an independent career. The architect I. M. Pei, to whom Breuer was close, gives his opinion of Breuer’s greatness.