The Abandoned Breuer

Reading the NY Times story I wrote about (below) made me wonder anew about the fate of this 1969 building by Marcel Breuer. When you're driving up or down I-95 through New Haven, CT it's a real landmark. Although now, it's got competition from another, bright blue and yellow landmark right next door: the Ikea store which was built about 4 years ago. As a matter of fact, Ikea often uses the I-95-facing façade to hang humongous banners advertising their $1.99 breakfasts or $199 couches.

In 2002 there was a bit of an uproar when Ikea first showed interest in the adjoining lot
as described here by Kevin Mathews in "Design Community Architecture Discussion": The site is on land occupied by the 1969 Armstrong Building (recently known as the Pirelli building) designed by Marcel Breuer. IKEA's new prototype store is larger than previous stores (300,000 SF). The store's parking requirements have led to a proposal which removes the entire base to the rear of the of the Pirelli building and surrounds the Pirelli building with an asphalt parking lot and minimal planting. A good portion of the base of the building can be preserved with only an impact upon 80 parking spaces (out of 1.241 total). Likewise, the magnificent greenspace surrounding the building can be designed as "turf-parking" with inexpensive, accessible technology, similar to turf-parking technology used at the Westfarms Mall in Connecticut.
So, originally the building looked like this, at left, with greenspace! Hard to imagine as now it floats like a big bodiless head, bobbing on an ocean of asphalt and cars (no, "turf-parking" was not used!).

What will happen to it? – GF

Marcel Breuer @ the National Building Museum

I'm sorry to be missing this show at the National Building Museum (it ends Feb. 17). Not only that, I'm sorry I didn't even know that there was a National Building Museum in Wshington D.C. before a Google alert told me that there was a show called Marcel Breuer: Design and Architecture!

Although I never met him, I could have (he died the year I graduated from art school, 1981). My parents were friendly with him and lived in this house (at left) for two summers while designing and building their own modern house in neighboring Pound Ridge, NY. The summers must have been 1949 and 1950, or maybe shift it back one to 1948 and 1949 . . .? But the house I grew up in bears more than a passing resemblance to the house on Sunset Hill Road. Only better: thanks to the radiant heat in our floors and the level rock-ledge the house grows up from, our shoes and leather items didn't sprout hairy green mold as things did at the Breuer house. Built on a hillside, rain or spring water apparently was drawn downhill, and moisture sort of got stuck in the lower floor of the house. A muggy summer meant moldy, green shoes. So goes the family story!

We visited this same house just this past Autumn as part of the New Canaan Modern House Day Tour + Symposium. The agreement with the New Canaan Historical Society was that the tour groups (16 people or so at a time) were not allowed to go in the house - or even peer in the windows! But as soon as we showed up, the gracious and willing-to-answer-questions homeowner invited us right in. A wonderful surprise and happy ending to the MHD tours, and, although I wasn't born until maybe 10 years after my parents rented the house, a sort of homecoming for me.

Here's one of those odd things that happens when you grow up hearing the names of famous people mentioned casually at home in daily conversation . . . I read the bios of these people, and I'm blown away by the brilliance they were recognized for. They spun out and away so obviously from all else that was happening at the time because of that brilliance. Their contributions have made all the difference. – GF