Monuments of architecture and creators of the transcendence: Marcel Breuer (part 1)

("Wassily" Armchair: Marcel Breuer (1902–1981.  Image from https://www.metmuseum.org/)

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Introduction.

"What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones, 

The labor of an age in pilèd stones, 

Or that his hallowed relics should be hid 

Under a star-ypointing pyramid? 

Dear son of Memory, great heir of fame, 

What need’st thou such weak witness of thy name? 

Thou in our wonder and astonishment 

Hast built thyself a live-long monument..."

This quote from John Milton's bow of respect poem to William Shakespeare, the famous poet who wrote Paradise Lost, homage  to Shakespeare.  It is Milton's encomium to the structure to which Shakespeare's legacy may even transcend itself.  The Pyramid, the most incredible structural feat man has ever built, as it is testament to the endurance of weathering, not only the storms of nature, but the fraught conditioning of humanities ebbs and flows throughout history.  The rise and fall of Empires, the beginning and end to which time holds no favors within a Universe that neither cares or even chooses to understand the fears of human folly.  This remnant, a building, in all of its mystery and enchanting persona.  Has outlived its creators, the grandeur of Egyptian civilization.  Built to honor the Pharaohs in what they believed would assist their journey to the afterlife.  But in the uncertainty and belief of human longevity  - as  the human biology is short lived, with no indication that there is an afterlife.  It is when  you look up at the stars at night, knowing the indifference of nature, even in a meditative sense, human beings in someways also showed a reflective indifference with the same silence returned.  There is nothing.  In the quietness of the desert and in this emptiness you can imagine over three thousand years ago, the Egyptian gods in their silence would have showed a similar indifference towards man, yet, this structure I don't believe was to appease the gods, but, maybe unconsciously issued a defiance against them.  Knowing that we live within moments, the human biology decays and returns to the Earth.  So, it says also a lot about human ingenuity and engineering and more importantly architecture.  Whether conscious or not.  

The question is:  What do we build for?   Is there a purpose of structure?  If, it is an egotistical aspect of the human desire to create monuments to show that we do exist.  Even though that existence maybe short-lived.  I would feel that a motivation to create egocentric structure is pointless in its design, it will inevitably also be a frangible structure.  To which contemporary architecture has fallen into, within a world where easy credit and money flows have allowed a fast paced construction boom.  It feels defeated and possibly already dead.  As opposed to the Pyramids of Giza, and in my opinion, weren't built for ego, maybe for the greatness of trying to be one with the gods, but certainly devoid of any idea that these structures would outlast the very society that created them. Rather, these magnificently designed structures were built to stand alone and to transcend the very space and time which they exist in.  Even in impermanence they've eclipse and become immortal.

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“I am as much interested in the smallest detail as in the whole structure.” 

Marcel Breuer

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Marcel Breuer stands as one of the greats of twenty century architecture, born in Hungry in 1902, having studied fine arts at the Academy of Fine Art in Vienna, to which he was offered a scholarship.  It was when after only a few weeks of disliking the prestigious school, he left to start an apprenticeship with a Viennese Architect and given the chance to use his hands and to build cabinets at the Architect's brother's furniture studio.  At 18 in 1921 he then leaves Austria, his destination; Germany.  To enroll in a new design school called 'Bauhaus'.  The most famous and influential design school in European history, that spearheaded modernism, structural design and artistic futurism in the 1920s.  These can be seen as moments of coincidences, but rather I would say that Breuer was consciously aware of the trends in design, furniture and architecture, which was steadily building from the early 1900s from the emergence of Art Nouvelle into Art deco as a powerful template which spread across the cities of the Western World, from Berlin, Paris, London to New York City, Melbourne and Sydney.  And like the Breuer quote above, the devil is in the details, furniture began to look like living structural, its movements and flow.  Buildings were devised, drawing from Egyptian mythology and design, fusing what was seen from South America via the Mayans and Aztecs, almost at the time, alien inspired style artwork, jewelry and more importantly structural design.  

These pyramid shapes from central America and Middle East, inspiring as a brooding grandeur.  So you see the construction booms of that era, the steel, glass, the layering of building blocks to articulate theses external influences into modernist shapes. Art deco becomes the statement of the modern metropolis throughout the world.  It drives a hope and desire that the human race, in an organized manner, through design can create these artistic monuments. You can imagine the amount of enthusiasm globally to push design further as a modernist approach and with all this activity going on around Breuer, being a young enthusiastic student, he draws from the projection of these 'new' cities.  Having prior experience in furniture design Breuer creates his first completed project in 1925, titled the “Wassily” Chair – in a homage to his mentor Wassily Kandinsky (who bought the first one).  Once again, we note Breuer's quote ringing true; that  keen interest in appreciating the smallest detail to the larger structure.   Thus, this is the beginning of Breuer learning, in a humble manner, to appreciate the small details that can lead to the larger design and also in respect of the larger design inspiring the smallest details.  All should be seen as the same.  

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Authored by Adrian Glass