Breuer left the Bauhaus to establish his own architecture firm and, in 1932, he finished his first major concrete work: the Harnischmacher house in Wiesbaden, Germany, a structure whose form belied its weighty materials. “Here was a light-weight volumetric box on a frame of steel and reinforced concrete raised on pilotis [supports that lift a building from the ground] above its sloping site,” writes Columbia University professor Barry Bergdoll in the essay “Marcel Breuer and the Invention of Heavy Lightness,” recently published in the 2018 book Marcel Breuer: Building Global Institutions. Bergdoll asserts that Breuer ultimately sought lightness through his designs.

Art Nouveau Le Corbusier Of course, Breuer wasn’t the first 20th-century European architect to use concrete. In the early 20th century, French architect Auguste Perret began using reinforced concrete partially as a reaction against the decorative, busystyle of the day. One of his apprentices, the major French modernist (and godfather of Brutalism), furthered his efforts with such early buildings as the Anatole Schwob House (also known as the Villa Schwob) in La-Chaux-de-Fonds (1916), and later, iconic edifices such as the Convent of Sainte-Marie de la Tourette (1960), which appears like an intricate grid of concrete cells, interspersed with recessed windows. German architect Erich Mendelsohn was also pouring concrete in more free-flowing, rounded shapes. His Einstein Tower (1921) in Potsdam resembles a rocket. Breuer knew of Mendelsohn and looked to Le Corbusier, in particular, for inspiration. During Breuer’s lifetime, he helped make concrete a defining feature of the Brutalist style, using it in homes, workplaces, and cultural institutions alike.

In the 1930s, political upheaval altered the trajectory of European architecture. The Nazis shuttered the Bauhaus in 1933, and founder Walter Gropius left Germany the next year. Breuer moved to London in 1935 and worked with British architect F.R.S. Yorke. Together, they designed a proposal for a concrete city for theBritish Cement and Concrete Association Exhibition. According to Bergdoll, who recently spoke to Artsy by phone, their model—filled with two dog bone-shaped structures and a square central building surrounded by curving pilotis—“is fascinating because it’s almost a catalogue for many of Breuer’s buildings that he’ll undertake two decades later.”