The Architecture of Marcel Breuer

3 units

A seminar course examining the works of Marcel Breuer (1902-1981), one of the most important, but to date largely overlooked architects and designers of the second generation of Modernism. A contemporary of Louis Kahn and Carlo Scarpa, Breuer was trained at the then newly-opened Bauhaus in Weimar, and he then became the Furniture Shop Master in the Bauhaus at Dessau. During this time he designed a number of pieces of tubular steel furniture that are still in production today, including the Wassily Chair, named after fellow Bauhaus faculty and painter, Wassily Kandinsky. After working in Berlin, Zurich, Budapest and London, Breuer emigrated to the United States in 1937, opening an office with Walter Gropius (1937-41), teaching at the GSD Harvard (1937-1947), opening his own office in 1941, and moving to New York City in 1946, where he practiced for the rest of his life. Often considered a follower of Gropius, Breuer's architecture was in fact one of the most elegant and powerful transformations and extensions of the later, primarily cast concrete works of Le Corbusier. While Breuer has been most often recalled for his furniture designs (which are important and will be examined in the class), his accomplishments as an architect are far more significant, and will be examined in depth in this course.