Marcel Lajos Breuer, FAIA

Year Awarded: 1968
Born: May 21, 1902; Pécs, Hungary
Died: 1981; New York City

Quote
Space is not plastic, static, positive, projecting. It is hollow, negative, retiring. It is never complete and finite. It is in motion, connected to the next space and to the next—and to the infinite space. It is materially defined by slabs of masonry or wood or what have you, by structural frames, by a dome or by a sheet of glass. But defined only, not isolated.


Projects
• 1977: IBM Complex, Boca Raton, Fla.
• 1975: Gagarin House II, Litchfield, Conn.
• 1970: Saint John’s Abbey and University, Collegeville, Minn.
• 1968: Parish Church, Olgiata, Rome
• 1967: Flushing Meadow Sports Park, New York City
• 1966: Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City
• 1966: Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial, Washington, D.C.
• 1960: Flaine Ski Resort, Haute Savoie, France
• 1958: UNESCO Building, Paris
• 1942: South Boston Redevelopment, Boston
• 1939: Breuer House, Lincoln, Mass.
• 1936: Gane’s Stone Exhibition Pavilion, Bristol, England


Biography
In 1920 Marcel Breuer went to the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts on a scholarship to study painting and sculpture, but quickly left there dissatisfied and went to work at a Viennese architecture firm. He applied to study at the relatively new Bauhaus in Weimar Germany, where he studied from 1920 to 1924. After graduation, he moved to Paris for a year, working for an architect there. In 1925 Walter Gropius invited him to return to teach at the Bauhaus; he taught there until 1928, becoming head of the school’s furniture workshop and focusing on the merger of art with technology.

When Gropius left the Bauhaus in 1928, Breuer also resigned. He practiced architecture for three years in Berlin, designing houses and commercial spaces. Because he had trouble finding work , he turned to on renovations and furniture design. As the Nazi party began to rise to power in the 1930s, Breuer moved to London. During this time, he continued to struggle in his search for work, so he traveled in southern Europe and worked for a time in Budapest.

In 1937 Breuer followed Gropius to the United States and took a professorship at Harvard’s School of Design. He and Gropius opened an architecture firm there, collaborating on several house designs in Boston and the surrounding area, including Gropius’ home. Together they designed the Pennsylvania Pavilion at the 1939 New York's World Fair.

Breuer and Gropius dissolved their partnership in 1941 and Breuer established his own practice, moving it to New York in 1946. He partnered with designer Eliot Noyes in New York, and their firm designed about 70 houses, including Breuer’s home.

In 1953 Breuer collaborated with Pier Luigi Nervi and Bernard Zehrfuss in the design of UNESCO's headquarters in Paris. It was at this point in his career that he began to use concrete as his primary medium. In 1963 he began work on the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, which was a three-year project. In 1970 he designed the Armstrong Rubber Company headquarters in West Haven, Conn., and began consulting work on Harry Seidler’s design for the Australian Embassy in Paris.

Considered a father of Modernism, Breuer’s work reflected his early interest in sculptural forms, with an emphasis on attention to detail and functional design.