Monday, January 31, 2011

MARCEL BREUER

































full name : Marcel Lajos Breuer
birthdate : May 21, 1902
Birthplace : Pecs, Hungary

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 homes

1949

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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