Marcel Breuer

he got married twice in his life. His first wife was Marta Erps and his second wife was Constance Crocker Leighton with whom he had two children, a daughter, Cesca and a son, Tom.

He died on July 1, 1981 in New York City, US.

He was born on May 21, 1902, in Danube valley town of Pécs, Hungary, to Jacques Breuer and Franciska (Kan) Breuer. His father was a physician.

He completed his graduation in 1920 from the ‘Magyar Királyi Föreáliskola’ in Pécs. After receiving a scholarship he began studying at the ‘Academy of Fine Arts’ in Vienna but dropped out after a few weeks and joined a Viennese architectural studio. He showed keen interest to get trained in the architect’s brother’s cabinetmaking shop.

He moved to Germany in 1921, after he came to know about the ‘Bauhaus’ design school in Weimar. The ‘Bauhaus’, which was founded and led by Walter Gropius, applied modern principles to fine arts and industrial designs.

He began his training at the ‘Bauhaus’ and designed several wooden furniture that included an ‘African Chair’ and ‘Sommerfeld House’ furniture in 1921 and a ‘Slatted Chair’ that he started designing in 1922.

In 1924, he completed his post graduation from the ‘Bauhaus’ and moved to Paris, France, to further his studies in architecture. It is here that he met Le Corbusier, one of the pioneers of modern architecture.

He was convinced by Walter Gropius to return to the ‘Bauhaus’ in 1925, which by that time shifted to Dessau. He was appointed as a master as well as head of the cabinet making workshop of the ‘Bauhaus’. He was also delegated with designing the interiors of the new school building in Dessau from 1925 to 1931.

The architecture of bicycle handlebars inspired him to create the tubular metal chair ‘Wassily’, in 1925. Many of his architectural creations including the chair were manufactured in bulk by the ‘Thonet Brothers’ in Germany.

He was delegated to do interiors of the housing estate, the ‘Weissenhof Estate’ that was built for exhibition in 1927 in Stuttgart, Germany.

With the help of Gropius, he received his first independent house commission ‘Harnischmacher House I’ in Wiesbaden in 1932.

During 1932-36, he collaborated with Alfred and Emil Roth and designed the ‘Doldertal Apartments’ in Zurich, for Sigfried Giedion, a Swiss architectural historian.

His real breakthrough came in 1953 when he received the two most significant institutional buildings commissions. The first one was the ‘World Headquarters’ of the ‘United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’ (‘UNESCO’) in Paris that he designed in association with Bernard Zehrfuss and Pier Luigi Nervi.

The second one was a series of assignments received from St. John’s Abbey and University in Collegeville, Minnesota, which he executed from 1953 to 1968, mostly in association with Hamilton Smith.