Breuer: The Hungarian Architect Behind Brutalism

Brady Corbet’s cinematic tour-de-force The Brutalist sweeps numerous accolades in this year’s awards season. The harrowing epic follows the life of a Hungarian-born Jewish architect and Holocaust survivor, László Tóth (Adrien Brody). It is centred on the portrayal of an immigrant struggling to achieve the American Dream, who has his life turned around by a wealthy industrialist.

The film was almost entirely shot in Budapest, linking Adrien Brody closer to his character, through his Hungarian heritage. The actor said he was inspired by his family’s own immigration story, as his mother, photographer Sylvia Plachy, fled Hungary with her parents after the 1956 Hungarian Revolution.

Albeit the protagonist is a fictional character, the audience and professionals alike agree that the life and work of Hungarian architect Marcel Lajos Breuer was a strong inspiration for Tóth’s story - in the early 1950s, Breuer was commissioned to design a big brutalist church on a hill, just like Tóth – only it was in Minnesota, for Benedictine monks.

Modernist architect Marcel Lajos Breuer (1902-1981) became famous for his iconic tubular steel chairs, the Wassily and the Cesca, however, few people know the wide variety of brutalist buildings he designed worldwide.

Born during the golden age of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in Pécs, Hungary, in 1902, Breuer has always had an artistic flair, he was particularly interested in paintings and maths.

In 1920 he joined the Bauhaus, the avant-garde art school in Weimar, Germany, where he studied first, then taught classes himself, and quickly followed the lead of founder of the art school, Walter Gropius.

As early as at the age of 23, he was the first person in the world to use bent metal for furniture making, hence his immortal fame as the modernist furniture master. But after a while, there was no space for him to put his architectural designs into practice, so in 1928, he left Bauhaus to establish his own architectural office in Berlin. After designing the Dolderthal apartments in Zurich for Sigfried Gideon (1934), he moved to London, where he shortly worked with Jack Pritchard, founder of the Isokon company and building, before moving to the US in 1937, to join Walter Gropius at Harvard University and became a professor in architecture.

From the 1950s Breuer took on institutional commissions, mainly designing monumental concrete structures, the true characteristics of brutalist architecture. Overall, Breuer's studio produced more than 100 buildings. Sadly, there are no Breuer buildings in Hungary today, but he designed and worked on many projects, among them the UNESCO headquarters in Paris, the Old Whitney Museum in New York and the Hotel Marcel in Connecticut.

Opening in 1934, designed by Canadian engineer Wells Coates for Molly and Jack Pritchard, the Isokon building, also known as Isokon flats, was a cultural hub, where many of the world’s greatest artists, architects and writers came about. Among the first residents were Bauhaus founders Marcel Breuer, Walter Gropius and László Moholy-Nagy.

In 1937 Breuer was asked to design the Isobar, the bar and restaurant in the basement space of the Isokon building. The restaurant was to open out onto an outdoor deck and was furnished by Breuer with some of his most famous pieces for the Isokon Furniture Company.

The Isobar became a regular exhibition space, and the basement transformed into an informal north-London salon, regularly attended by Adrian Stokes, Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicholson and Naum Gabo.

Breuer also designed the Isokon long and short chairs, in 1935-36, one of the most important pieces of furniture to emerge from the inter-war modern movement, that is now in the permanent collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Breuer died in 1981 in New York, leaving a very unique legacy beyond him. He donated his professional papers and drawings to Syracuse University library beginning in the late 1960s. The remainder of his papers, including most of his personal correspondence, were donated to the Archives of American Art, Washington, D.C., between 1985 and 1999 by Breuer's wife, Constance.