Gropius + Breuer + Knoll

Sometimes the calendar, and in particular birthdays, makes interesting neighbors and arranges interesting polemics. Take the week of May 18-24, when Walter Gropius (136), Marcel Breuer (116) and Florence Knoll (the ingenue at 102 years young) all celebrate their birthdays. The linkage is trilateral, with the Gropius-Breuer partners in architecture (and of course the Bauhaus), Breuer-Knoll partners in furniture and Knoll working at Gropius’s firm when Breuer was in residence.

Gropius, who said “The mind is like an umbrella. It’s most useful when open.” was, like this quote, a bit quotidian, perhaps a better organizer of talent than a monumental designer in his own right…but there are standout and outstanding buildings by him.

The Fagus Factory is at least as much Peter Behrens (or perhaps Adolf Meyer) for whom Gropius (and Meyer) worked, as it Gropius. And it is primarily a ‘façade job’ with Gropius and Meyer entering the project after architect Eduard Werner, a factory specialist, failed to produce a suitably communicative exterior. It is an architecture of image, as opposed to one with a deeply intellectual and philosophical foundation. And this defines Gropius for the future, an architect with a firm grasp of projected image, if not as a genius of planning and space.

The Bauhaus school, Gropius’s masterwork of design education, was housed in a tautly detailed and significantly radical set of buildings in Dessau. To adequately awe the public he wrapped the main studio façade in a massive curtain wall, in spite of the climate impact on the building (freezing in winter, roasting in summer). And the photogenic balconies of the residential block are similarly on-brand. Note the classic vintage photo and its similarities to the Fagus Factory; curtain wall and solid volume are compositionally linked, and the hermetic quality, despite the glass, is present.

 The Lincoln Massachusetts home Gropius built for his family is less insular, more complex in its indoor/outdoor qualities and more idiosyncratic than most of his earlier works. He claimed it was as a gesture to the local New England homes, but really he was just solving more culturally complex issues. Because he worked with Marcel Breuer it is unclear how much influence was from each architect, but Breuer’s nearby house is quite a different matter: a sprawling shape in plan vs. the deftly carved box. In fact the beautifully, and skeletally, defined outdoor space is the first and only example of this in a Gropius building. Makes you wonder…

Gropius was a genius at managing a creative stable, whether at a school or a firm. Among those in the stable was Marcel Breuer, who joined the Bauhaus and created some of the most memorable furniture ever made, there or anywhere else. The genesis story (possibly apocryphal, considering his losing a patent suit with Mart Stam) is well known; Breuer admired his Adler bicycle and thought to use the steel frame technology (recently improved to eliminate the seams in tubing, and allow bending while maintaining structural integrity) for seating. It was the royalties from his furniture that allowed Breuer to thrive before his architectural career was fully realized, due to a separate deal he made with a manufacturer before Gropius could do the same. It’s clear how much Gropius and others thought of Breuer’s business acumen as a betrayal of the Bauhaus, but somehow the relationship not only survived but flourished.

Mart Stam may have invented the cantilever steel tube chair, but Marcel Breuer made it popular. So popular that by the 1980’s his gorgeous Cesca chair was copied to death, available for next to nothing and went from ‘classic’ to ‘I can’t stand looking at another…’ in record time. A shame because the chair is a remarkable piece of design, with machine-made and man-made,  natural and manufactured parts, all in one comfortable, elegant package.

Breuer started in a cabinet shop, made his way to the Bauhaus as student, then instructor, and eventually popularized the most lasting icons of the movement in his myriad furniture pieces. Moving to Harvard with Gropius they worked together, taught together, designed and built homes for their families together and eventually parted as they pursued separate practices.

Breuer started with a series of houses, including the one built in the garden of MoMA in 1949 (now installed at the Rockefeller estate Kykuit) and my brother’s house in Croton-on-Hudson in 1950.  He graduated to larger projects, including the Whitney Museum and Unesco HQ, as his facility for the plastic qualities of concrete developed. His student I.M. Pei and others continued this passion for concrete well into the end of the last century.

Knoll acquired the Breuer collection of furniture designs when it purchased Gavina SpA in 1968, three years after Florence’s retirement, but by then a seminal firm in American modern design. As much as any architect Knoll, both firm and Florence, promulgated the modern interior by both planning and furnishing them. In the end no single piece of architecture, nor any architect, made the case for modern interiors at work and home more than Knoll and her firm.

Knoll created a language of furniture that both domesticated office and professionalized the home. The pieces define, as much as Eames, McCobb or Nelson, the mid-century renaissance in furniture and interior design, helping to usher in the era of Mad Men Modernity. She was virtually alone as a woman designer at Knoll (perhaps Anni Albers kept her company after being invited by Florence Knoll to created product for the company) and she remained the sole female voice there for years. She was the face of Knoll not just because her husband died in a 1955 automobile crash, but because she was actively engaged in designing and design. Florence gave Knoll, like Ginger Rogers gave Fred Astair, sexiness, no small accomplishment given the cadre of German designers she shepherded. 

Together Gropius, Breuer and Knoll share not just a week of birthdays but roles as catalysts for the way we now live and work.