WORK AND PROJECTS: 1920-1937

The years from 1920, when Marcel Breuer entered the Bauhaus as a student, to 1937 when he carne
to the United States to teach architecture at Harvard, were years of experiment and invention.
He was born in 1902 in the Hungarian town of Pecs. He had gone to Vienna in 1920 intending to be-
come a painter and sculptor. But the Art Academy had disappointed him with its air of tired
eclecticism; he had walked in through its portals, looked around and left-for good. The coffee houses
were not much better; they were full of "revolutionary" pseudo artists and pseudo-intellectuals who
talked grandly of changing the world but who had never taken the trouble of learning the
fundamentals of their chosen arts-or, for that matter, of learning very much about the world.
Like some other men of his genera. tion, Breuer felt he had to learn something practical, a trade. He
went to work for a furniture designer who maintained a workshop on the site. He found out, soon
enough, how much he had to learn: one day he tried to adjust the blade of a planer by hammering
away at its edge. He was so embarrassed by the clumsiness of the attempt that he left the workshop
and never turned up again.

Somewhere, somehow, he felt he had to learn from scratch. One day a fellow-Hungarian told him of
the Bauhaus school in Weimar, Germany, then being organized by the architect Walter Gropius. To
Breuer it sounded exactly like the sort of place he had been looking for: Gropius had assembled a
good many modern painters and sculptors-Feininger, Marcks, Iuen, Muche, and later on Schlemmer,
Klee, Kandinsky, Moholy-Nagy. But he was not merely running another art school: his aim in 1920
was to unite the fine arts with the simple crafts, to teach these crafts in order to bring about an under-
standing of materials and tools of building, without which he believed that a 20th century artist could
not operate effectively.

WEIMAR

Like any other experimental school, the Bauhaus went through an initial period of trial and error. One
of the problems was, of course, that no trained teachers were available to head the various workshops
being set up: there were plenty of fine artists and there were plenty of good craftsmen. There were no
men in whom an esthetic sense was united with practical know-how.
Consequently, when Breuer came to Weimar in 1920, he discovered that the first "generation" of
Bauhaus students was, in effect, left to its own devices and largely had to teach itself. He was
fortunate in two respects: First because his own talent and energy were more than equal to such a test,
and, secondly, because the Bauhaus soon became the most important center of modern art in postwar
Europe.

TECHNOLOGY

As the school grew and its program became clarified, the emphasis shifted materially from the crafts
to modern technology. Partly, at least, under the influence of students like Breuer, the leading ideal of
the Bauhaus became "Art and Technology - a new Unity," with the emphasis on technology. The
concept was to train a new kind of artist-technician, capable of coordinating the work of all the many
specialists who were needed to operate modern industrial production methods, and whose vision,
whose ability to plan, and whose esthetic sense would assure a new standard of quality in industrially
produced goods-from lamps to skyscrapers. It was the ideal of the medieval master craftsman brought
up to date to fit into an incredibly complex industrial society.
Breuer found the Bauhaus atmosphere increasingly well suited to someone with imagination and with
an urge toward experimentation. And experiment he did; before long he was thoroughly occupied
with furniture design, concentrating upon modular unit-cabinets that antedated today's well known
"storage walls" by 30 years. In 1924 he took over the direction of the furniture department. But
furniture design was not his sole interest: he designed several notable interiors; and the concept of
unit-furniture seemed to lead him, logically, to unit-housing-houses both prefabricated and attached
to form horizontal developments, and "houses" stacked one on top of the next to form slab-like
apartment buildings. The rhythms and patterns of mass production industry opened up exciting new
vistas in almost any field - from painting to ballet - and the Bauhaus explored them all.

DESSAU

In 1925 the Bauhaus moved to Dessau and into new buildings. Breuer -by then a "Master of the
Bauhaus"-had just bought his first bicycle. And while admiring the handsome frame, he suddenly
realized that the chromium plated, tubular steel handlebars demonstrated a wonderfully flexible use
of a strong and elegant modern material. The bicycle manufacturer, to whom Breuer suggested the
possibility of making furniture out of tubular steel, thought that he was drunk. Obviously, nobody
was going to use chromium plated steel inside a home. But Breuer went ahead anyway, and within a
span of three years designed dozens of remarkable tubular steel chairs, stools, tables and desks. Many
of them have been copied since all over the world. They have become so commonplace as to have
achieved complete anonymity: people who buy them every day never give their design a second
thought-only an art historian would ever associate them with the name of any one designer.
Unfortunately for Breuer there is no real design protection for such "simple" inventions. He did,
however, receive royalties on some of his designs until the early '30's.
Breuer left the Bauhaus in 1928. He had advanced rapidly: at the age of 22 he had been appointed
Master of the Carpentry Shop (he had learned a few facts about planers since the days in Vienna). A
year later, he was designing all the furniture for Gropius' new Bauhaus buildings and the interiors for
the Masters' houses. Yet the opportunities to work in architecture were limited, and Breuer felt he had
to go to Berlin to find a wider range of work. So he left Dessau. He was only 26 years old, and his
reputation as a major designer in the modern movement was virtually assured.

BERLIN AND WIESBADEN

During the next three years, Breuer maintained an office in Berlin, trying desperately, despite the
depression, to work on architectural commissions. He could not have chosen a worse time for such a
start. Nevertheless, a few jobs came his way: he designed some apartment interiors, participated in
several architectural competitions, developed a number of projects that were to influence his work
(and that of others) in years to come. Then, in 1932, Breuer built his first complete house, a 3 story
"villa" in Wiesbaden for the Harnischmachers who had been among his earliest clients. The house
was in many ways characteristic of its period clear-cut, white, somewhat cubist in composition. But
in its several unusual details, in its regard for different textures, and in its concern with problems of
sun-control, the Harnischmacher house showed a great deal of independence and inventiveness on
the part of its designer.

The house was an unusually mature first job. It was the kind of architectural solution Breuer likes, the
kind of solution he has tried to achieve ever since: a success both in pure, esthetic terms, and a
success also as a place for living. This dualism is Breuer's principal, philosophical contribution to
modern architecture. Other architects, especially beginners, might tend to overstate in one direction
or another, die esthetic at the expense of the practical. Still others might blend the two in a colorless
compromise. But Breuer, from the very first chair designs to his most recent houses, has always
insisted upon giving equal weight, equal clarity, and equal expression to each important element and
to create a vibrant architecture of many contrasts.

The best proof of his success with the Harnischmacher house was certainly this: when he returned to
Wiesbaden twenty years later, he discovered that a British bombing plane had crashed in the
Harnischmacher garden during the war, blowing up the house as it did. The Harnischmachers, upon
seeing Breuer again, immediately commissioned him to design a new house for them on the same
site. That new house was finished in 1954. It is a fascinating commentary on the development of
modern architecture that while the 1932 Harnischmacher house had columns of steel encased in
concrete, the 1954 Harnischmacher house has a pergola with columns of rough-hewn granite. . .

TRAVELS

By 1931 the economic and political situation in Germany was deteriorating rapidly. Breuer was
fortunate in having a steady income from his tubular steel furniture, and so he decided to take a
number of extensive trips - through the south of France, Corsica, Spain, North Africa, and Greece. He
saw a great deal of "important" and a great deal of "unimportant" architecture - the Cook's Tour kind
as well as the peasant buildings - and both made a lasting impression upon him.
He interrupted his travels only twice: first when "he received a wire, in Spain, from the
Harnischmachers asking him to come to Wiesbaden to build their house (see above); and again, late
in 1933, when he was asked by the art historian, Dr. Siegfried Giedion, to design a group of three
small apartment buildings in the Dolderthal, near Zurich. This commission, done in partnership with
the Swiss architects Alfred and Emil Roth, produced a major statement about new forms, new living
spaces, new relationships between nature and buildings - and about innumerable details of
construction and design not here to fore properly solved. The buildings continue to speak for
themselves: today, two decades later, they look almost better than they did when they were first
completed - living proof that Breuer has learned as much about technology as he had about art, knew
as much about building as he did about design. Not many modern structures of those years were built
so well, and to last so long.

LONDON

With the Dolderthal apartments built, Breuer went to settle in England, and for more than two years,
until his departure for the United States, he worked there in partnership with the young architect
F.R.S. Yorke. For a newcomer to Britain he did very well: almost immediately friendly manufacturer,
Jack Pritchard, began producing some of Breuer's latest furniture designs: a whole set of chairs and
tables made of bent laminations of wood. This group of furniture - known as "Isokon" - together with
some earlier designs by Breuer in aluminum and molded plywood formed the basis for most of the
metal and molded plywood furniture that has now become so familiar and so successful throughout
the world.
Two other projects of Breuer's stay in England are important: first, a huge model of a "Civic Center
of the Future" done for the British Cement Association; and, second, a small furniture exhibition
pavilion built, in 1936, in Bristol.
The "Civic Center" is a fantastic and stimulating collection of almost futuristic building forms,
demonstrating not only a great many new uses for reinforced concrete, but documenting in detail a
vocabulary of architectural forms which Breuer had acquired for his future use. For the project
contains just about every big building idea Breuer had conceived of up to that time, and it presaged
several ideas he was to develop further in his later work.
The Bristol Pavilion, for Crofton E. Gane, was a very different structure: simple, geometric, of a
striking clarity, the little construction of stone, glass and wood represents a major step forward for
Breuer and for modern architecture as a whole. For here, for the first time, he built a structure that
used only natural materials and textures, in addition to (and in contrast with) the large sheets of plate
glass. The building is considered one of the major works of early modern architecture.
Breuer worked on one more project before he left England: a small winter sports hotel for the
Austrian Tyrol. It, too, had stone and glass walls. However, to Breuer's regret the hotel was never
built: The Hitler Ansehluss intervened, and Breuer's client left the Tyrol for Canada. Soon after
Walter Gropius called Breuer to Harvard.

Note: At various times during his career, Marcel Breuer associated with other architects, engineers
and designers. To simplify credits to his various associates, symbols have been used throughout this
book to identify these partners. Here is a key to these symbols indicating what associations they
represent:

Marcel Breuer, Josef Fischer & Farkas Molnar (B.F.M.)

Marcel Breuer and A. & E. Roth, associated for the Dolderthal Apartments (B.R.R.)
Marcel Breuer & F. R. S. Yorke, partnership 1936.1937 (B.Y.)
Walter Gropius & Marcel Breuer, partnership 1938.1941 (G.B.)
Marcel Breuer & Lawrence B. Anderson (B.A.)
Marcel Breuer, Eduardo Catalano & Francisco Coire, associated for the Mar del Plata restaurant
(B.C.C.)
Marcel Breuer & Eliot Noyes (B.N.)
Marcel Breuer, Robert B. O'Gonnor & W. H. Kilham, Jr., associated for the Litehfield Schools
(B.O.C.K.)
Marcel Breuer, Pier Luigi Nervi & Bernard Zehrfuss (B.N.Z.)
Marcel Breuer & William herg Lands (B.L.)
Marcel Breuer & A. Elzas (B.E.)
ARCHITECTURE IN THE LANDSCAPE

A building is a man-made work, a crystallic, constructed thing. It should not imitate nature – it
should be in contrast to nature. A building has straight, geometric lines. Even where it follows free
lines, it should be always clear that they are built - that they did not just grow. I can see no reason at
all why buildings should imitate natural, organic or grown forms.
A building is a thing in itself. It has a right to be there, as it is, and together with nature. I see it not as
an isolated composition, but a composition related to nature, a composition of contrasts. Nature and
architecture are not enemies - but they are distinctly different. They should live together the way a
man and a woman live together: it is certainly not necessary (nor, for that matter, very interesting) to
try to assimilate husband and wife to each other. In fact, the greater the difference (within common
sense limitations) the more contented their relationship is likely to be.
I feel it is a great mistake either to adapt building forms to organic forms, or to adapt natural forms to
the crystallic, geometric forms of architecture, as it was done in the Rococco period There is a certain
charm in the Rococco gardens with their trees and bushes trimmed into neat, geometric shapes; but in
the modern garden I would much prefer to see free forms, organic, undisturbed, natural forms-rather
than "charm."
Of course, we do not always draw a sharp dividing line between the house and its landscape. Quite
often the geometry of the house is projected out into the landscape, in the form of retaining walls and
terraces. But whenever that happens, the terrace and the retaining wall is treated as a distinctly man-
made thing. Even when the retaining wall is free in shape so free you might be tempted to call it
organic - then it is still made clear, crystal - clear, that tells is a wall built by a mason, and not a
grotto or a romantic rock garden. It is definitely something built as a backdrop to the landscape - and
the landscape is a backdrop to it.
The same thing is true about the way we use natural materials in our houses. When wood is used in a
building, it may not be "wood" in the old, traditional sense, but a new material altogether, especially
if it is plywood. When stone is used in a wall, it is no longer some sort of rock formation, but a clear
cut slab -made of stone for the reason that stone is a good and durable and texturally pleasant
material.
And, finally, this principle of contrast operates most importantly in the way we use color in the
landscape. For example, I think the one color that should be avoided most in our kind of landscape is
the color green, because much of our landscape is green. And in a landscape that is full of vivid,
many- shelled, lively greens, a flat, painted green will look rather dead. In a landscape in which reds
or yellows predominate, green might be a very beautiful architectural color to use. But in the kind of
landscape we know best, the way to use green is to bring plants into the building-either visually,
through a glass wall, or in actuality, by bringing the plants into the house.
That, in any event, is a much more satisfactory way of using color than to try to imitate natural colors
with paint. I would much rather bring the color of a flower into a house by bringing the actual flower
inside, than by painting facsimile-flowers on the wall.
All I have just talked about concerns the details-forms, materials, colors in the landscape. But the
most important aspect of this problem is, of course, that the structure must be related in certain
definite ways to the site chosen for it. Naturally, every single building is fundamentally affected by
its land.
The house in the town, on a street, opposite another house that is only 30 feet or so away, is an
entirely different thing from one in the country, with distant views of the landscape. And even within
the landscape there are many differences in site, orientation, elevation and view. When the house is
located on top of a hill it should not be a house made almost entirely of big glass walls, because the
sky glare is so blinding that life in such a house would be intolerable. But when we go down into the
valley, then the house can easily have large walls of glass because the hillside, opposite the walls of
glass - even a hillside half a mile away - helps to protect our eye against sky glare. No nerve can
relax if the eye is not comfortable.
This is one basic consideration. In our modern houses the relationship to the landscape is a major
planning element. There are two entirely different approaches, and both may solve a problem well:
there is the house that sits on the ground and permits you to walk out into the landscape at any point,
from any room. That is a good solution, for children, in particular. And then there is the house on
stilts, that is elevated above the landscape, almost like a camera on a tripod. This will give you a
better view, almost a sensation of floating above the landscape or of standing on the bridge of a ship.
It gives you a feeling of liberation, a certain élan, a certain daring, while the idea of being in a house
close to the ground might do something to increase your sense of security. My own favorite solution
is one that combines these two opposite sensations: the hillside house. It can be built so that you enter
the top floor from the uphill side and the lower floor from the downhill side. On the top floor, looking
downhill, you find yourself standing on a platform, up in the air, floating above the landscape. We
would then put the children's playroom on the lower floor; so that they can walk out into the grass
and play outdoors any time they feel like it. Down there you have the feeling that the house hugs the
ground - and it does.
The formation of the land, the trees, the rocks - all these will influence the shape of the house, all
these will suggest something about the design of the building. They are an important starting point
for any building. The landscape may traverse the building, or the building may intercept the
landscape.
Again, I cannot believe that the two should be mixed up, confused, joined by imitation or
assimilation. That is not the way to clarity, and the compulsion towards clarity is basic - just as basic
as thinking itself.

THOUGHTS ON THE CITY

A great deal has been said and written about the problems of modern city planning. Yet, I feel that
many of the suggested solutions have been overly simple: the city is such a complicated organism, so
greatly dependent upon vested interests accumulated over past years, so constantly faced with the
uncertainties of future years, so easily influenced by political, industrial and social factors - in short,
it is so intricate that it never seems to stand still long enough to permit analysis. And its vacillations
just do not permit oversimplified solutions.
Some people, realizing this, have reacted by giving up altogether. They say that long range city
planning is not possible, and they rationalize their negative attitude by attacking the very idea of
planning. They say that planning means rules, rigidity, regulation, preconceived ideas - and that
planning forces our way of doing things upon future generations.
Others who, I feel, are equally wrong, declare that we ought to abandon the city altogether, and
spread our great urban concentrations like butter over the countryside. That is the other face of
negativism.

The first question we ought to ask ourselves in talking about the city is why we want to preserve it at
all. The answer is all around us: the city serves an important human need. It has the drama of the
market place, it has the excitement of personal contact, of infinite possibilities. It has the intensity of
speed, it is a constant demonstration of vitality. Even if our cities should ever be destroyed by atomic
bombs, and if some parts of the human race survived such a disaster, these men and women would
soon again build new cities. More people live in Hiroshima today than in the days before the bomb.
Whether we like it or not - and I happen to like it - cities are here to stay. We may as well make them
into more pleasant places than they are now. Planning must be made possible. It is a necessity. To
describe the so¡:t of planning needed on every level is obviously beyond the scope of this book, and
beyond the scope of architecture. (One trouble about city - planning theories in the past has been that
architects, who should have been talking about the potential contributions of architecture, talked
instead about subjects like politics, economics and sociology in which they were not particularly
expert) So, I think I will stick to architecture and the physical planning of cities, and start with the
scale, with the dimension of our point of attention.
The first thing we must agree on is that the unit of city planning can not be the single, individual
building. The unit must be much larger. Wherever we look, the only halfway successful attempts at
city planning have involved large units, large groups of buildings. Rockefeller Center or Stuyvesant
Town in New York, or the Pittsburgh Point Development, or the Penn Center in Philadelphia. These
are not perfect examples, because they fail in a second consideration - in terms of composition, which
I will come to in a moment - but they do indicate the right direction: they show that the big unit and
not the single building is the only possible approach to an even relatively successful city plan.
The big unit has many advantages: for example, it can be made free of through - traffic the most
serious planning problem in most modern cities. The big unit can be served by large traffic arteries,
but the traffic within the unit can be restricted to local communication only. Much of it, in fact, can
be pedestrian (which is another way of saying that people living in a big unit will learn to know each
other more intimately, since the pedestrian park or the pedestrian street becomes an outdoor living
area suitable for closer human contacts) Much of the services - truck lanes - can be underground, as
they are in places like Rockefeller Center today.
How big should these big units be? The answer will have some local variations, but I believe about
500 acres should be the top limit. Beyond that size local traffic becomes too heavy again, pedestrian
traffic becomes too cumbersome, and the big unit will tend to disintegrate into the sort of complexity
we have today.
We have long known how to think, esthetically, in terms of bigger units. Elsewhere, in discussing the
problems of space, I have mentioned that we no longer consider rooms to be isolated compartments,
shut off from the next room and the next, but that we think instead of Huid, continuous spaces. In
discussing modern theories of structure, I have pointed out that continuity is the key to modern
structural design – not the isolated post supporting the isolated beam, but the continuous distribution
of all stresses through an entire structural frame. And in discussing textures and patterns, I have
mentioned that the detailed decoration of each individual object has given way to the continuous,
textural pattern of a large, slablike plane.
The big unit principle is indeed part and parcel of modern architecture. When we design a facade we
think in terms of a large texture which will help mold and give character to an outdoor space. Our
facades are a kind of woven fabric, a "rush matting." They can be beautiful or not, just as Scottish
tweed can be handsome or poor. But our facades will always be elements of a greater, coherent
composition - elements in the big unit. They can be long or short, vertical or horizontal, interrupted
by occasional accents or continuously neutral. They can be flexible, with variable modulations
applied to a simple structural system. But whatever their details or proportions, they are above all a
large-scale texture designed in size to fit the new dimensions we must face - the dimensions of the
big unit.
The second contribution that modern architecture can make to the city plan is in the composition of
the big unit. The mistake made in the big units of the recent past and present is that most of them are
all offices, or all apartments, or all amusement centers. That, of course, defeats one of the key
principles of the big unit, which is that it should establish city living on a human, that is a pedestrian
scale, free from through traffic. If the inhabitant of a big unit that contains only apartments must
travel 10 miles every time he or she wants to get to another big unit that contains only shops, one of
the great advantages of the big unit idea is lost. Its people will start moving again, not on a base of 6
square feet (the walking man) but with a base of 200 square feet (the moving automobile).
The composition of the big unit is therefore most important. The big unit should really be considered
as a very large building (though it may consist of several detached structures.) The unit should
contain residential areas, shopping areas, schools, small manufacturing and office areas,
administrative and cultural areas, facilities for various health and social services. It should take
account of a wide range of income groups. In a sense, each big unit should be designed lilie a huge
hotel or a huge ocean liner: self-sufficient in every major way.
So the city unit becomes a kind of island between through traffic lanes, with only one or two turnoffs
from the traffic lanes into the island unit. Some of the units may have more specialized functions:
some may be civic centers, some may be university units, others may be devoted almost exclusively
to the operations of government. But the point is that these are in fact the unit sizes which we can
make work. The units must be built in one stroke, and they must be replaced in one stroke. Just as we
can not build a house one room at a time, so the city-unit can no longer be built in a piecemeal
fashion. There is no reason why such large units can not be created, either privately or under semi-
public control. Local politics can have no part in this matter of urban survival - our cities oudast the
politics of the day. They must be built according to technical knowledge and to satisfy general,
human needs.
Only when cities are built of such large units can their architectural composition ever amount to
anything which functions, and of which we can be proud. We see it in some of the cities built in
Europe, on the initiative of omnipotent rulers. There were drawbacks to that system of building a
city, but there were many architectural advantages too. Each big unit district could have its
architectural character, its masses, its spaces between masses, squares and piazzas for vistas and for
civic functions, parks for people to live in out of doors his time that the open square regained its
importance - the square as a symbol of civic pride and as a tool of civic life: a necessary waste of
space.
I am not suggesting that we create a series of villages along a parkway. The through-traffic artery is
simply a more efficient device for channeling one kind of traffic - the long distance traffic - into
something separated from the local traffic. The great highways would have fewer crossings: Fifth
Avenue, with its interminable crossings, does nothing to make Manhattan more like a city. It actually
cuts up the city with insuperable barriers.
I think that the scale of big-unit planning will retain all the excitement of modern city architecture. It
will be a space for the individual in which he can enjoy his life - a place where he need not dodge the
automobiles all day to save his life.
Is all this Utopian? I think not, his not only that we spent about 30 times the cost of an entirely new
New York City in World War II. It is also that the present city pattern is completely uneconomical
and inefficient. Downtown stores go bankrupt because of traffic congestion, for their customers (who
live miles away) can not get anywhere near the store to 'buyo Companies with offices downtown (a
one hour ride on crowded trains from where their employees live) must pay premiums for getting
good people to work for them. The market place, the clearing house of ideas, is about to die of self-
strangulation: for a market place is no market place unless goods can be bought and sold in it, and an
intellectual center is no intellectual center unless people can get together in it to talk.

STRUCTURES IN SPACE

Until very recently, the only way to build was to exploit the weight of stones or bricks or wooden
logs to pile one on top of the other, each holding down the one below as well as itself, and to span
short distances with beams or arches that depended upon the same gravity or compression-principle
for their strength.
The great change in construction over the past few decades has been the shift from simple
compression structures to continuous, fluent tension-structures. This change is so radical that it alone
would justify a completely new architectural expression.
Builders of the past always used gravity to defeat gravity. The best symbol of their method is the
Egyptian pyramid - very broad at the bottom and narrow ing to a point at the top. At each layer it is
smaller than on the layer below, because each layer holds up less weight. There are many other
examples: the Roman arch, although more sophisticated as a structure than the pyramid, still
depended upon the weight of the keystone for its strength. The beams from Stonehenge to the Greek
temples were all big, elongated stones that rested with their full weight upon other stones shaped to
look like columns. The only exceptions are a few smaller structures like the traditional Japanese
houses or the prehistoric lake dwellings or the medieval frame house. But even those, while
sometimes using wood beams in short cantilevers and for short tension-members, never went very far
beyond compression structure.
The great change in our structural possibilities is best exemplified by the suspension bridge, which is
the perfect symbol of tension structures just as the pyramid is the perfect symbol of compression
structures. What has happened is that several new materials with great tensile strength, like steel,
reinforced concrete and, more recently, some alloys of aluminum, have been developed. This means
that we can now support weight more economically by suspending it on a strand of steel from above
rather than supporting it by a mass of stones from below. It means that we can build structures of
reinforced concrete that have embedded in them long and intricate webs of steel rods which make the
whole structure continuous - rather than a series of weights-upon-other weights without connection.
As a result of this continuous structure, in which tension and compression forces alternate and flow
into each other along predetermined lines, we can now cantilever structures way out into the air -
either horizontally, as a projecting balcony, for example, or vertically, as in a skyscraper. In either
case, the seemingly unsupported structure that sticks out into the air is really tied back to the rest of
the building or to the earth. The whole skeleton of the building is a continuously integrated frame,
and any stress on one part of it is resisted by all other parts of the frame. The "new structure" in its
most expressive form is follow below and substantial on top - just the reverse of the pyramid. It
represents a new epoch in the history of man, the realization of one of his oldest ambitions: the defeat
of gravity.
It would have been impossible to pick up a pyramid and to set it down on its peak. The whole thing
would have collapsed, because the gravity forces within the pyramid could not reverse themselves
without breaking up the whole structure. But you could, theoretically, pick up a continuous
reinforced concrete frame and set it up on an angle. Obviously, it would be subjected to new and
perhaps dangerous stresses, like an ocean liner in a storm, but because every part of it can be
integrally connected to every other part, the structure could retain its shape, if it is conceived to resist
stresses and its own weight, vertically, diagonally, or horizontally.

What does this mean in terms of architecture? To start with, we have to get used to the idea that
massive weight does not mean safety. In fact, if anybody tried to build the Empire State Building of
stone it would be very unsafe. Its safety depends upon its continuous steel frame. Most builders still
do not admit this simple fact. They use the very sale, continuous structures of today, and then they
dress them up to look like the very unsafe, gravity structures of yesterday. I think that people will
soon lose any fear that they may have felt when they first saw our new, light-weight tension
structures. Nobody hesitates nowadays to walk across Brooklyn Bridge, although many did when it
was first opened.
It seems that people are beginning to delight in these exciting new structural possibilities. They love
to watch bridges and other steel or concrete frame structures go up. They love to see these things
supported on practically nothing and rise up to be developed in height. It is the principle of the tree –
a structure cantilevered out of the ground, with branches and twigs in turn cantilevered out from the
central tree trunk. The reason it stands up is that it is a continuous organism, with all the stresses
flowing through all of it continuously. It is not a series of columns each supporting so much weight.
Each column is what we call a line in the path of structural forces. There is no interruption in that
flow of structural forces at any point.
Why do we like to "express structures?" Is there any particular reason why structure should be
identical with the architectural form? I think there is, to a great extent. Everybody is interested in
seeing what makes a thing work, in seeing the inner logic of things. It is a pleasure to see a body
moving - a race horse or a man. It is interesting to see the movement of bones and muscles under the
skin. A tree without leaves looks, in a way, more interesting than a tree covered with foliage and
hidden by it.
But there is such a thing as excessive structural expression, structural exhibitionism. It is a primitive
fashion to claim that all that is inside should also be visible outside. For the building is an organism
of many parts: there is the structure, and then there are different layers or specialized skins wrapped
around that frame. There are layers to insulate against heat or cold, against dampness, against too
much sky glare. These are the skins of the building - just as "true" as the structural frame. Then there
are the entrails of the building, the muscles, the nerves - mechanical equipment, and so on. They have
as much right to be expressed as the bones. Obviously, there are some buildings that are 90%
structure, and there the structure can be expressed as a pure element - as, for example, in an Eiffel
Tower. Then there are buildings that are only 20% structure and 80% something else: in a department
store there are infinitely complex mechanical services, interior ventilation, special lighting,
installations, interior transportation, a maze of conduits, ducts, wiring. Just as our intestines are
covered by skins and diaphragms, so it makes no sense suddenly to decide that the structure and
everything else in that store must be visible for some reasons of doctrine or dogma.
As in all aspects of building, there is the natural, the logical way. But because we like to see that
inner logic in all things which I mentioned above, I feel that structure should be expressed where
possible and where it makes natural sense.
The most interesting developments in structural design are those using reinforced concrete.
Here is a completely plastic medium - concrete for compression, steel for tension in one new
material. It can do both things simultaneously: stand up and hang on. This material in folded and
curved shells has tremendous strength and can span great openings. In spaces that can be closed off
completely-as in our Assembly Hall for UNESCO - continuous, curved and folded concrete shell
structures open up important new possibilities. For here the material not only acts as the support of
the building, but also as the enclosure, the form not only bones alone, but bones, muscles and skin
combined.
A great deal of experimentation with reinforced concrete has been carried on in Europe and South
America. This way of building requires a great deal of work on the building site it means high cost in
countries like the United States where site labor is expensive. But many of those new, continuous
reinforced concrete structures have been made up of hundreds of prefabricated parts that are
lifted up into position and connected to the next part. As we get more of this development in
America, I believe we will see more of these exciting new structures and they will become
economically feasible here also. They seem to be especially suitable where space should be enclosed,
while in structures that are largely open, transparent or glass-enclosed, the light steel frame is still
perhaps the best answer.
It is interesting that the two most important single developments that underlie our new architecture
have at their base the concept of flow, of motion: the flow of space which leads toward a continuity
of space; and the flow of structural forces which leads to a continuous structure. There seems to be an
inherent logic in our approach which manifests itself in several related phenomena-space and
structure, both floating, continuous.
Is there today such a thing as a demonstrative architectural form? Is there a symbol comparable with
the archaic column, the gothic arch, the renaissance dome? It is, perhaps, the cantilevered slab - light
and slightly resilient in the wind.

COLORS, TEXTURES, MATERIALS

It is a relatively simple thing to use nothing but color. You have to know something about color, of
course-you have to have a feeling and a judgment about it -but, still, it is not too hard to create
pleasant compositions of different colors and shades.
But if you limit yourself to color, there are other aspects that tend to be neglected. Color is flat. We
sometimes require more than flatness. You cannot overlook the fact that a natural material without
color, like stone, (I mean a material without a decisive color) may be much more practical to walk
over or to be exposed to the weather, than a material of a plain, simple, decisive color. It ages better -
when you get it, it is thousands of years old.
There is also an esthetic aspect to this, of course: the visual impact of a texture, the slight variations
of a natural texture (stone, wood, rush, etc.) next to color-all this gives a certain physical sense to
form and to space, to the exterior and to an interior. We seem to like this, we like the touch of it in
somewhat the same simple way as we like warmth. The atavistic, physical sensation, the touch aspect
of the natural materials gives us something - perhaps confidence.
The atmospheric, emotional radiation of color gives something else. So we do not use one thing alone
to the exclusion of everything else.
An architectural composition needs all these elements - materials, patterns, textures, colors -
it needs the freedom to use all this and it needs the strict discipline to use all this in a lasting way. For
we don't change our buildings the way we change our neckties.
Originally, most modern pioneers did not wish to be anything but "modern" - which meant linoleum
on the floor, white or red, and plain colors everywhere else. Or black linoleum. But I have come to
the conclusion that it is much more interesting, much more vigorous, much more "human" and more
in keeping with the objectives of architecture if the colors (which can be contrasting in themselves, of
course) are contrasted with a completely different element - with nature, or stone, or wood, or for that
matter, with the movement of the air.
The eager study of new materials, new possibilities, promising developments should not make us
forget the old ones. Old materials take on new properties and a changed appearance with new uses:
plywood is quite different from wood, glass from crystal, a granite veneer is different from a bearing
stone wall, camel's cloth from a camel's hide, a free-standing brick slab is quite different from the
solid corners of the buildings in which I grew up.
The clearest basic colors, vermilion red, cadmium yellow, cobalt blue, white and black floating in a
space defined by glass, steel, concrete, as well as by stone, wood, leather and rush - this is the
complicated formula stated in an overly simple way.

FORMS IN SPACE: SUNSHADES

The oldest civilizations developed in temperate climates: the Mediterranean, Central America, China.
Man spent a greater part of his life outdoors. There he carried on much of his work as well as his
social life: the Greek philosophers taught and discussed outdoors, the legislators met outdoors, the
Greek theater had no roof.
The warmth of the sun made this kind of life possible and still does to some degree, on the piazzas
and streets of Italy, in the patios of Spain, on the terraces of the Paris cafes. At the same time, the sun
was also recognized as a formidable source of discomfort and danger. Streets were laid out and
houses were built with strict rules to provide shade to protect against the sun, the great friend and
deadly enemy. Later on, as we moved our civilizations northward, the winter began to ask for our full
attention - and we moved indoors more and more. Protection against the cold became urgent. It was
one of the dominant concerns of the Colonial builders on the American Continent, for example. The
main function of a building became to keep its inhabitants warm. Heating was troublesome and
costly.
Our modern age with its techniques changed all this. Fuel is plentiful and available to anyone and so
is glass. It is no longer difficult in engineering terms to carry the weight of floors or roofs above large
glazed openings. And because there lives in us an atavistic nostalgia for sun, daylight and outdoors,
modern architecture's concept of large glass areas and wide openness was enthusiastically received.
But as we turned the glass walls towards the sun, we again met our friend's searing intensity. Its
deadly effect has not always been considered.
It is odd that our critics and our clients should often question the cold of large glass areas. Actually,
we find that by paying some attention to orientation and to a flexible organization of movable and
fixed areas of the fenestration, heating a modern building is no more difficult or costly than heating a
conventional building.
The one neglected problem is the sun. The New York, Chicago, Boston sun has the same intensity as
the sun over Madrid or Naples. If we let it enter through our generous glass walls, it heats up floors,
partitions, furnishings, curtains and blinds to the point where it creates considerable discomfort.
Daylight, more or less, and privacy, more or less, can flexibly and effectively be controlled by
interior means. By curtains, blillds, movable light panels, shades. The sun, however, has to be
reflected before it is trapped behind glass and fills the inside with radiant heat. This is as true for an
air-conditioned building (it costs money to batde the heat indoors) as for a non air-conditioned
structure. The sun control device has to be on the outside of the building, an element of the facade, an
element of architecture. And because this device is so important a part of our open architecture, it
may develop into as characteristic a form as the Doric column.
Some may say: let's give up the glass. No - we intend to guard this new and great achievement of an
open architecture. How otherwise could we enjoy sun in winter - and all the changes in weather,
clearly visible from a protected inside - how could we otherwise experience a freed and floating
space - peace and life and the pulsing of nature around us - how else could we create the atmosphere
of gayness and light under our roof?

The early '20s. First sunshade designs consisted of strip balconies on facades of apartment building
projects. Next came canvas awnings and projecting roller shutters used on Harnischmacher House in
Wiesbaden (1932), and on Dolderthal Apartments in Zurich (1934). Every device used recognized
the basic fact that the heat of the sun must be stopped outside the glass - rather than with blinds or
curtains used on the inside. The latter type of device (a favorite with some architects) ignores the fact
that once the heat has been allowed to penetrate the glass, only very expensive air-conditioning will
be able to combat it. In the more recent examples shown on these pages, two technical principles
were introduced that seem to solve the sun-control problem with great efficiency: first, the "eyebrow"
sunshade is made of dats rather than solid panels, so that the heat that accumulates outside the
window can escape upwards before it affects the interior of the building; and, second, sheets of "solar
glass" that absorb heat and reduce glare (like sunglasses) were introduced as part of the sunshade
device.
The advantage of these sheets of "solar glass" is that they reduce sun radiation without limiting the
view of the landscape. This device was introduced by Breuer in a house in Colorado, which was
located in a deep valley close to steep mountain sides. Any opaque overhang would have cut out
almost all views. Since that time, the "solar glass veil" outside the actual skin of the building has
become a standard detail for many Breuer buildings. It will be the most striking characteristic of the
new UNESCO Headquarters.

WORK AND PROJECTS: 1937-1955

In the fall of 1937, when Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer came to the United States and began
teaching architecture at Harvard, most architectural schools in this country were still part of the
eclectic Beaux Arts system. The Beaux Arts, it is true, had been given a veneer of modernism, but
fundamentally it had changed very Hule from the days when young architects were shown how to
prepare elaborate tempera renderings of Pleasure Pavilions and Civic Monuments.

HARVARD

The proof of the impact of Gropius' and Breuer's work at Harvard is the fact that only half a dozen
years after their arrival in Cambridge, almost every major architectural school in the United States
had radically changed its program to follow Harvard's lead. And it is now common knowledge
among architects that the students with whom Gropius and Breuer worked in those prewar years are
today among the most creative designers and planners in North and South America.
What was responsible for this dramatic success? Unquestionably the educational theories formulated
by Gropius during the Bauhaus days and in later years had a lot to do with it. Briefly, Gropius and
Breuer believed that it was more important to train a student how to think than to tell him what to
think - that methodology was more important than dogma. Yet the teaching of an approach to design
and to planning is not enough in itself: once a student has been trained to use a particular method he
must next be inspired to use that method creatively. Judging by the comments of ex Harvard students,
Breuer possesses that ability to inspire students to a high degree.
While Gropius and Breuer were teaching the graduate students at Harvard they also maintained, from
1937 to 1941, a professional partnership which accomplished a number of house designs that have
been among the most influential of the past several decades. For these houses represent a major break
in the development of modern architecture: a break with the somewhat self-conscious machine -
aesthetic of the 20's and early 30's, and the introduction of traditional building materials (often in
their natural finishes) within the vocabulary of modern architecture. With a very few and not always
convincing exceptions, modern architects until 1937 had felt that it was close to treason to use
anything but steel, concrete, glass and other synthetic materials. After Gropius and Breuer built their
Massachuseus houses in the years between 1937 and 1941, rational modern architecture accepted
once and for all the value of certain traditional materials and forms - used in an entirely modern
manner - and has exploited their possibilities ever since.
It is only fair to point out that Breuer learned a great deal from what he now began to see in America.
He has always had a very real feeling for building and an appreciation of the work of skilled builders.
Just as he began to bring a new freshness into American architecture, so he received from American
building methods a good many lessons, especially in wood construction. He applied those lessons to
modern needs and today his technical details (especially in wood) - the real "signature" that an
architect leaves to his buildings - are highly respected among his fellow professionalism.
NEW YORK

The Gropius and Breuer partnership outside the Harvard classroom was dissolved in 1941 and each
opened his separate office. Breuer, however, continued to teach the older students until 1946, when
he transferred his architectural practice to New York. Just before leaving Cambridge after 9 years of
stimulating and successful teaching, he designed the Geller and Tompkins Houses for Long Island.
They were built immediately after the end of World War II, at a time when millions of Americans
were thinking of a new kind of house for a new kind of world. It was another example of Breuer's
luck - to have had the right clients at the right moment for the right solutions. The fact that he did not
muff this chance, that he built these two houses so handsomely and so well, established him in 1945
as the leading exponent of a major group of young American house-architects. His influence in that
field has not abated since, and many of the houses that popular magazines promote today bear the
unmistakable imprint of Breuer's work in the years before and after World War II.
In 1947 Breuer was invited to come to Argentina and Colombia, to advise the University of Buenos
Aires in the reorganization of the Architecture Department, and to consult with authorities of the City
of Bogota and the State of Colombia on matters of city planning. While he was in Argentina, the
magazine Nuestra Arquitectura published a double issue devoted entirely to his work in architecture
and design. It was the first comprehensive publication of Breuer's work, and it did much to clarify his
important position in the modern movement.
Upon his return to New York in 1948, the Museum of Modern Art, impressed by the South American
publication, commissioned him to design a modern exhibition house for the Museum Garden. The
house was opened to the public in the spring of 1949, and some 75,000 people saw it before the
summer was out. At the same time, the Museum prepared a traveling exhibition and published a
monograph on his work. The exhibitions and publications, together with the widespread publicity
which the house received, made Breuer's name familiar to thousands of people. As a result of this
publicity, Breuer's work in the design of houses grew in scope and variety. At the same time, his
reputation as a teacher remained very much alive: On February 9th, 1948, he went to Harvard to
deliver a brief lecture. When he finished, the students (most of whom knew him only by reputation)
handed him a petition signed by every student in the Graduate School, begging him to return to
Cambridge and continue where he had left off in 1946. During the next few years other colleges and
universities asked Breuer (somewhat more formally) to join their faculties. Among them were Yale,
Princeton, Columbia, M.I.T., and several others in the West, South and in Latin America. Although
Breuer likes to teach - in part because he likes to work with young people - he had to decline these
offers. There was too much practical work to do, and there was less and less time to do it in.

LARGER BUILDINGS

Nothing is more difficult for an architect in the United States than to escape being "typed" as a
specialist in one field or another. For some reason, Breuer was typed as a house-architect, in spite of
his past experience with many other building types. Such specialization tends to become stifling in
the long run, and Breuer was anxious to try his hand at more interesting projects. At long last the
break came for him too: in 1950, Vassar College commissioned him to build a new dormitory for its
students. In the next year he was busy as a consultant on airport terminal buildings in Alaska and on a
suburban department store outside New York. And, in 1952, he completed the new Art Center for
Sarah Lawrence College, a building that combines the functions of a theater, dance studio, and
community center under one roof.
PARIS

That year, also, Breuer was chosen as the American architect to help design the new headquarters for
the United Nations - Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in Paris. His
associates were to be the famous Italian engineer Pier Luigi Nervi and Bernard H. Zehrfuss, a leading
member of the young generation of French architects. Breuer left for Paris in the summer of that year
and, within a matter of weeks, produced with his associates a remarkable project for construction
near the Bois de Boulogne. Unfortunately, this project will not be realized, for the City of Paris
withdrew its offer of the original site and substituted another, more impressive site opposite the Ecole
Militaire. An entirely new design was therefore prepared by the three associates, and this new group
of buildings is now under construction.
In three respects, especially, the new UNESCO structures are a major and mature statement about
architecture today: The Y-shaped office building with rounded inside corners is a plan-type Breuer
has wanted to realize ever since it appeared in his 1936 design for "The Civic Center of the Future."
Its advantages in terms of circulation and optimum use of space are impressive. Next, the use of a
curtain of sun-control devices outside the building - walls is another step in a field that will become
increasingly important in years to come. Breuer believes that the sun-control device may become the
characteristic "trademark" of our architecture, just as the Doric column was the characteristic
"trademark" of its time. The sun-control devices designed for UNESCO (both in the first and in the
second projects) are more carefully studied and more completely integrated with the building than
any built heretofore. Finally, the team of architects and engineers developed a series of concrete
structures that exploit dramatically the wonderful potentialities of this plastic material - in thin,
warped and curved planes that utilize the principle of the eggshell in modern construction; in
continuous, thin concrete folds that span huge distances, and in concrete space - frames of great
daring. As the building s rise in the center of Paris, they will represent all important demonstration of
the aesthetic and technical possibilities of our time.

WORK IN PROGRESS

By 1954, Breuer was in effect running two separate offices: one in New York, the other in Paris. His
New York office continued to develop new houses, for the house problem still fascinated Breuer
because of its many complexities. But the most important work carried on in New York dealt with
schools, factories and two religious structures: the large new St. John's Abbey in Collegeville,
Minnesota, for a community of Benedictine monks; and a smaller Convent of the Annunciation in
Dickens, North Dakota.
The Abbey, in particular, has attracted a great deal of attention, and some Catholic authorities believe
it to be a major step toward a renewal of leadership in the field of architecture on the part of the
Church. Toward the end of 1954, Breuer received a further important commission in the new row
house community to be built for Dr. Oppenheimer's Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton.
Meanwhile the Paris office began to put the UNESCO project into action. Contractors' bids had come
into the UNESCO office in September 1954, and proved that the new headquarters buildings would
be very economical to construct. While UNESCO House became a reality at long last, Breuer
received an other European commission: to design the new department store for the famous Bijenkorf
concern, in Rotterdam. He has rarely had more imaginative and enthusiastic clients, and the result to
date has been a design full of interesting technical innovations (e.g. in window treatment) and a fine
example of collaboration between a modern architect and a modern sculptor - in this case, Naum
Gabo.
This book closes with a great many projects. Some of them will be reality before this page is printed.
All will be watched by architects the world over who have known for some time that Breuer
possesses the sort of clarity of thinking and imagination that makes his work well worth watching.
One reason for this is that it has always been his work. He is busier than ever before, yet there is no
detail, however small, that does not directly concern him in every building that bears his name. A lot
of art has gone out of architecture because many architects have become organizers and managers
exclusively, and have depended upon armies of bright young designers to do the work. For Breuer
that would not be any architecture worth doing. He has gathered around him more than a dozen of the
best young designers he could find. Yet he has never lost the feel - the personal, direct, immediate
feel - for stone and wood, concrete and glass. He is a modern architect in the tradition of the great
master builders.
I like to think that Breuer made a plan all for us and that our way of life dictated his thinking.
However, in all honesty I cannot think that. I remember our first conversation. We had talked about
our life for a good two hours when he looked up and said, "your program is very similar to my own
house." For a budget of $24,000, for a family of five, for people who wanted to ask friends for a
weekend, for a client who had already bought the site, for young parents with young children - our
house couldn't be very much else and still be Breuer's solution to this set of needs.
lE the house becomes the client's alter ego, if he feels that his problems are unique, and if he
simultaneously dreads that his house will look like a thousand others, then he will confine the
architect and divert him from the logical, reasonable solution which his experience and skill evoke.
I do not mean to suggest that there is only one solution for a particular set of circumstances. Each
solution involves the philosophy and purpose of both architect and client. These cannot be isolated
from each other. Many unsuccessful houses can be traced to an isolation, where the client, on the one
hand, with years of living "knows what he wants" and the architect, on the other hand, tries to say
something all his own, to satisfy his private end separate needs.
There must be a give and take between these two forces. lE 1 had the right I would offer any client
the following very simple advice: first, choose the architect carefully, not so much from the work he
has done but from an evaluation of his capacity to do. Many people have preconceived ideas about
how a house should look, and this sometimes gets in the way and sets up prejudices. Clients, in
looking at an architect's work, are liable to trip over details and lose sight of the final objective.
Breuer knows this well. I have seen him talk to prospective clients, either singly or in committee,
without reference to his work. I have witnessed a committee working with plans for more than six
months, the members never really knowing the "look" of the building or, for that matter, the "look" of
Breuer, but instead spending endless hours on the "use."
Breuer lets the client grow with the house, keeping him on the essential track, making him feel that
he is part of the creation. He leads clients very gently to their own conclusions - and this may take
months - very much like a teacher, never swerving from what he believes to be true. While they
work, the client comes to know Breuer, the man, and with this new insight into the man, they
understand and come to believe in his architecture. After the client has chosen the man.

ONE CLIENT'S POINT OF VIEW

by Rufus Stillman

I would think that he must tell the architect how he lives, how he likes to meet people and what sort
of people, what he likes to do in the evenings, in summer and in winter. He must tell him what he can
afford, and about his children. He should talk about food and art and work and music. The third and
most difficult principle to follow, he must give the architect freedom of choice.
It seems to me that many clients will worry about each detail until the details start interfering with the
whole. A client can thus force the architect into spending most of his time in detailing liule spaces for
trivia, when he should be spending the same time on creating areas for living.
Both architect and client search the other's thoughts and then proceed on the faith that comes from
this knowledge. The question "why" has been asked as well as "how," and almost as often. Again it is
the architect who must answer. He brings to the problem solutions out of his experience: he brings
his talent and his skill but, more importantly, he brings insight and reason. No one can say that a
house is too small, or too large, or too luxurious, or too anything without knowing the architect -
client purpose represented in the design. A house is too big if it is designed to inflate the ego of its
owner or its architect. It is too small if its size confuses the lives of those who live in it. It is too
luxurious if the choice of materials both inflates and confuses.
For us, all these seemingly complicated problems were made easy. Because we did not think we
knew enough to talk in terms of design and plan, we had to talk about ourselves. We knew so liule
that we did not try to narrow Breuer's approach. As we talked we found great areas of agreement. For
instance, we found (or rather Breuer found for us) that we believed in the separation-connection of
children and parents. Over a long period of time he had developed an architectural translation of this
belief - the bi-nuclear house, the hillside house, the U-house.
Our house, built on the hillside, has the children's bedrooms on the ground floor and the parents'
bedroom along with kitchen, living and dining rooms on the second floor. Practically always, visitors
ask if we can hear the children.
But I am sure if they found us all jumbled together - neither group having sufficient privacy,
privilege or freedom - they would ask the other question, "Where do you go if you want peace, or if
you want to read a book."
Other and richer generations found "the study" a usMul way to han die this problem. It was to that
room that children cr~pt on tiptoe to kiss Papa a silent goodnight. Breuer is not afraid to express this
need in bold terms and face the criticism that he has put children in the cellar. Our children's "cellar"
has the grass to the windows and their own door to the fields. It has deep colored walls and slate
blackboards and sun splattered floors. Somehow it seems to me a far more generous solution to their
problems than the "upstairs" bedroom, next to the parents.
And the parents - where do they get placed, and why? We had a very special reason for the placement
of our bedroom. Because of an injury, I have a difficult time navigating stairs, and therefore it was
practicable that I should be able to live on one floor. But, even if I could climb three steps at a time,
we probably would have found ourselves next to the kitchen - if for no other reason than to be near
coffee in the morning.
Other reasons demand this solution. There has to be a balance between upstairs and downstairs. If it
takes 1,200 square feet to "bed" the children and the guests, to give children a play area, to heat the
house, and launder the clothes, you have to use 1,200 square feet upstairs - and so the parents landed
upstairs. And we hear the children - plenty!

Breuer stops nature at the walls and you know that you are in a building. Although he is very
sensitive about nature, he makes no compromise; his house is manmade and it looks it. You sit on the
cantilevered porch and look at the sweep of the roof. You sit by the pool and watch the color panels
reflected in the water. You walk out of the door and into the field and you watch the birches shadow
the wall. You see building against trees, the horizontal against the vertical. And you sit inside and see
nature lightly framed by the windows. You see crisp walls cutting the grass into patterns. You see a
house, and you see nature, and you understand that the two are apart, but that they give to each other.
People have come to say, "The house fits so well into the hillside." I remember asking Breuer to
suspend our porch with wire to suggest the wonderful freedom of a hawk gliding the hillside, but his
solution offset the porch from the house, giving us a clear view of the valley. This logical answer
concretely demonstrates his respect for nature.
As the house works with nature, so it works with people. It complements them but it stands by itself.
Breuer's plans result in an effortless flow of living. I feel no abruptness when moving from bedroom
to living room to dining room. The ceiling and windows sweep throughout the house, with the
chimney and a low closet wall simply screening the use of one area from another without splintering
the space. However, no part of the house's function has been sacrificed for effect. Breuer claims that
architecture is only one percent art; but that last percent tips the scale. You see art in Breuer's choice
of materials and contrasting textures; you see it in his choice and placing of colors, and in the simple,
raw details that let you understand the structure. He wastes nothing. I can hear him saying, "It is not
bad to spend money, even a lot of money, on a house. It all depends on how you use it." His houses
are not covered with veneer and slickness, but stand like skeletons. The money and the art are in the
skeleton, in the bones, and in the cavity - they are not wasted on externals. He points out that there is
nothing so luxurious as space - space for its own sake. "you hear people talk of proportions," he once
said. "It is scale that can make the difference. Proportions change with scale."