Marcel Breuer

Hungarian architect and designer (Pécs, 22-05-1902 – New York, 01-07-1981)

Marcel Breuer (Pécs, May 22, 1902 – New York, July 1, 1981) was a Hungarian architect and designer. He was an important exponent of the Bauhaus and the modern movement.

In the early twenties he studied at the Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien in Vienna and at the Bauhaus school in Weimar (carpentry course). At 19, in 1921 he designed and created the African chair or romantic chair in hand-carved wood and designed fabrics. The shape of this chair is fundamental to understanding the origins deriving from local cultures (Hungarian folk in this case) and from artisan production. This chair, like most of the known prototypes of the Bauhaus, is handcrafted inside the laboratories.

After a period of professional training at an architectural studio in Paris, he returned to the Bauhaus school in 1925 as a teacher and until 1928 he directed the furniture workshop. And under his direction from 1926 the workshops began to produce chairs and tables in steel tubing, he began the design of modern furniture in metal tubing, including his famous chairs both in wood and fabric backrest and in iron tubing with straw backrest through which he sought new expressive solutions. New materials were also created such as eisengarn which would be used for the first time by Breuer in the Wassily Chair. In 1927 the patented industrial production of this furniture (including many designed by him) experienced full-scale activity.

Building

Sonnhalde kindergarten, Lucerne (CH), 1968/1972
Department of Housing and Urban Development, Washington (USA), 1968
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (USA), 1966
Unesco Palace (in collaboration with Pier Luigi Nervi), Paris (F), 1959
Breuer House, New Canaan, Connecticut (USA), 1951
Aluminum City Terrace (in collaboration with Walter Gropius), New Kensington, Pennsylvania (USA), 1940/1941
Chamberlain House (in collaboration with Walter Gropius), Wayland, Massachusetts (USA), 1940/1941
Frank House (in collaboration with Walter Gropius), Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (USA), 1939/1940
Harnischmacher House, Wiesbaden, 1934 J. Ford House (in collaboration with Walter Gropius), Lincon, Massachusetts (USA), 1938/1939
Gropius House (in collaboration with Walter Gropius), Lincoln, Massachusetts (USA), 1937/1938
Doldertal Housing Estate, Zurich, 1935/1936
Casa Saier, Glanville, France, 1972-1973 (with Mario Jossa and the sculptor Nerone Ceccarelli)

Design

The African Chair, 1921, with weaver Gunta Stölzl Wassily Chair, 1925
Chair B32 "Cesca", 1928
Armchair B 35, 1928-29
Cot No. 313, 1932
Table, 1925-1926
Armchair, 1935-1936

Source: Wikipedia (https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Breuer)