Marcel Breuer : building global institutions

MARCEL Building Global Institutions Edited by Barry Bergdoll and Jonathan Massey Lars Muller Publishers

6 Introduction: Bureaucratic Genius 18 I SAINT JOHN'S ABBEY 34 Marcel Breuer and the Invention of Heavy Lightness Barry Bergd oll 64 II UNESCO 80 Architecture and Mediocracy at UNESCO House Lucia Allais 116 Marcel Breuer: Structure and Shadow Guy Nord enson 140 Ill PRECAST PANEL 154 From Garden City to Concrete City: Breuer and Yorke's Garden City of the Future Teresa Harris 1so Atomic Bauhaus: Marcel Breuer and Big Science John Harwood 202 IV NEWYORK 222 Architectures of Opportunity at Breuer's Bronx Campus Jonathan Massey 252 V FRANCE 212 Modernism as Accommodation Kenny Cupers wit h Laura Martin ez de Guerei\\u 292 Breuer's Ancillary Strategy: Symbols, Signs, and Structures at the Intersection of Modernism and Postmodernism Timothy M. Rohan 318 VI GLOBAL BREUER 348 Postface: The Marcel Breuer Digital Archive at Syracuse University Lucy Mulroney 359 Acknowledgments 360 Biographies 36 1 Index 367 Credits



Furniture designer, teacher, and architect Marcel Breuer is celebrated for changing the American house after he emigrated in 1937 from the Bauhaus to Harvard and then New York. Renewed interest in Brutalist architecture, combined with the reopening of the iconic Whitney Museum as the Met Breuer, is introducing an expanded public to the buildings and urban designs that made Breuer one of the most influential modernist architects of the 1960s and 1970s. In ten chapters and six visual portfolios, leading scholars draw on newly digitized archives to interpret the architect's corporate headquarters, research labs, campuses, churches, housing complexes, and city plans. Together, they show us how Breuer's heroic and complex modernism gave shape to the institutions of global postwar society. ISBN 978-3-03778-519-5 111111111111111111111111111111 9 783037 785195