EncyclopediaBreuer, Marcel Lajos
Breuer, Marcel Lajos (broi'ur) [key], 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.
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).
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2007, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
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