Breuer, Marcel Lajos

Breuer, Marcel Lajos (broi`ər), 1902–81, American architect and furniture designer, b. Hungary. During the 1920s he was associated, both as student and as teacher, with the Bauhaus in Germany. In 1925, Breuer won renown with his design of the first tubular steel and laminated plywood chair. He built only one private house (Wiesbaden, 1932) before leaving Germany to work in Switzerland and England. Breuer became associate professor of architecture at Harvard in 1937, and from 1937 to 1941, was a partner of Walter Gropius, with whom he designed several outstanding houses. He developed exterior sun shielding and made bold sculptural use of poured concrete. With Nervi and B. H. Zehrfuss he planned the Paris headquarters of the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (1958). Among Breuer's major later designs are St. John's Abbey, Collegeville, Minn. (1953–61); the U.S. embassy at The Hague (1958); the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City (1966); and the New York Univ. Technology I and II buildings (1969), New York City.

Bibliography

See his Sun and Shadow, ed. by P. Blake (1955), Buildings and Projects, ed. by C. Jones (1962), and New Buildings and Projects, ed. by T. Papachristou (1970).

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Breuer, Marcel Lajos 

Born May 21, 1902, in Pecs, Hungary. American architect.

Breuer studied and worked in 1920-28 in Germany at the Bauhaus (mainly as a furniture designer), and in 1925 he invented tubular steel furniture. In 1928-31 he lived in Berlin, in 1935-37 in London, and after 1937 in the USA (where up to 1941 he collaborated with W. Gropius). As one of the leaders of functionalism he strove for a functional sharpness of composition, clarity of building structures, and compactness of planes and volumes. Breuer’s buildings include the Bijenkorf department store in Rotterdam (1956-57), an enclosed area with widely spaced slit-shaped windows, a controlled climate, and artificial illumination; the UNESCO building in Paris (1953-57, jointly with B. Zehrfuss and P. L. Nervi); a gymnasium in Litchfield, Conn. (1954-56); and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York (1966). These buildings demonstrate the achievement and possibilities of modern architecture and are notable for the plastic expressiveness and skillful use of the structural and artistic possibilities of concrete.

REFERENCE

Breuer, Marcel. Buildings and Projects, 1921-1961. London, 1962.