1920
Wins a scholarship to study painting and sculpture at Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. Leaves after a few weeks to work in an architect's office. Moves to Weimar, Germany to study at the Bauhaus.
1921
Becomes an apprentice in the Bauhaus furniture workshop where his first piece is the ornate African Chair.
1922
Designs the De Stijl-influenced Wood-slat chair.
1924
Leaves the Bauhaus for Paris, where he works for an architect.
1925
Accepts Walter Gropius’ invitation to return to the new Bauhaus in Dessau as head of the furniture workshop. Starts to develop the innovative tubular steel Steel Club chair, later christened the Wassily Chair.
1927
Co-founds Standard-Möbel to manufacture and distribute his tubular steel furniture. Designs furniture for Erwin Piscator's apartment.
1928
Quits the Bauhaus when Gropius resigns as director and sets up an architectural office in Berlin, but struggles to find work.
1931
Still scratching for architectural commissions, Breuer takes several months off to travel in southern Europe.
1932
Dividing his time between Hungary and Switzerland, Breuer starts developing aluminium furniture with which he will win a competition in 1933.
1934
The first aluminium pieces go into production.
1935
Breuer joins Gropius in London, where he designs plywood furniture for Isokon, a company owned by Jack Pritchard, and opens an architectural office with F.R.S. Yorke. Together they design the Gane Pavilion in Bristol which combines local stones and woods with International Style glass and metal.
1941
Closes practise with Gropius, but they remain friends and continue teaching at Harvard together.
1946
Completes his first post-war building, the Geller House on Long Island, and opens an office in New York with Eliot Noyes as his partner. This office will design some 70 houses mostly on the East Coast including Breuer's own.
1937
When Gropius leaves London to become architecture professor at Harvard, Breuer follows. He is given a professorship there and opens an architectural office with Gropius which begins by designing their own homes1949
Having staged a touring exhibition of Breuer's work in 1948, the Museum of Modern Art, New York commissions him to design a house in the museum garden. This commission revitalises Breuer's career.
1953
Designs UNESCO's headquarters in Paris with Pier Luigi Nervi and Bernard Zehrfuss.
1957
Begins work on lecture halls and residences for New York University.1963
Starts a three year project to design the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York (probably the best known).
1968
Wins the AIA’s Gold Medal and the first Jefferson Foundation Medal that cited him “among all the living architects of the world as excelling all others in the quality of his work.”
1970
Designs Armstrong Rubber Company headquarters in West Haven, Connecticut with Robert F. Gatje and starts work on the Australian Embassy in Paris as consulting architect to former assistant Harry Seidler.
1976
Retires from work.
1981
Marcel Breuer dies in New York on the 1st of July after a long illness.
1976
Retires from work.
1981
Marcel Breuer dies in New York on the 1st of July after a long illness.
He was one of the most influential exponents of the International Style; he was concerned with applying new forms and uses to newly developed technology and materials in order to create an art expressive of an industrial age.
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