Archinect - News

Sotheby’s taps Herzog & de Meuron and PBDW to renovate historic Breuer Building

2024-11-04T15:45:00-05:00

The opportunity to renovate one of New York City’s most important cultural buildings, Marcel Breuer’s Brutalist icon at 945 Madison Avenue, has been granted to a partnership that includes Herzog & de Meuron and PBDW Architects after Sotheby’s named the firm to the project on Monday.

H&dM's co-founder Jacques Herzog says the project will be carried out with much the same precision as the firm’s previous renovation of the Park Avenue Armory not far away in their shared Upper East Side neighborhood. Existing spaces will be adapted to meet the current business and exhibition needs, while Breuer’s "original vision" of the 58-year-old design is recuperated both within and without for both the public and private clients.

"The Breuer Building is such an amazing architectural icon of postwar modernism which we—just like all architects—have always admired. Since our early work in the 1970’s, we have always placed great importance on working with existing buildings, not only from a sustainable...

Preservation group completes purchase of Marcel Breuer's 1949 Cape Cod home

2024-08-02T17:43:00-04:00

The fight to save Marcel Breuer’s former home on Cape Cod, the 1949 Wellfleet Cottage, has reached its conclusion after The Cape Cod Modern House Trust completed its purchase following a successful $1.4 million fundraising campaign. Breuer’s son Tamas was the homeowner at the time of the sale.

The house had reportedly degraded into what The Art Newspaper describes as “not in the best condition.” The Modern House Trust's spokesperson told the outlet: “Work begins on the restoration immediately.”

Marcel Breuer's 1950 Marshad House is on the market for $1.8 million

2024-05-01T12:23:00-04:00

Marcel Breuer’s restored 1950 Marshad House in the Hudson Valley has been listed with an asking price of $1.8 million. The residence at 204 Cleveland Street in Croton-on-Hudson, New York, is a three-bedroom design with 1.5 bathrooms and has an interesting history from the original owner's affiliation with Look magazine and relation to the influential sculpture garden installation that was exhibited 75 years ago at MoMA.

Image: Dot Record Media/Julia B. for Sotheby’s International Realty

Sotheby’s International Realty has the listing. Galerie noted it includes a 290-square-foot converted art studio in the former garage.

Image: Dot Record Media/Julia B. for Sotheby’s International Realty

Sotheby’s (the art auctioneers) recently bought Breuer’s brutalist landmark Whitney Museum of American Art building in Manhattan for $100 million.

Image: Dot Record Media/Julia B. for Sotheby’s International Realty

In BRUTAL DC, Brooks + Scarpa proposes adaptive reuse of Marcel Breuer's landmark 1968 design

2023-10-25T13:49:00-04:00

Brooks + Scarpa has proposed an adaptive reuse renovation of the Marcel Breuer-designed Robert C. Weaver Federal Building in Washington, D.C. in an effort to address the chronic issue of empty office space plaguing the city’s economic growth and downtown core.

The proposal is included in a new exhibition at the Southern Utah Museum of Art that examines Brutalism’s past and future potential through seven key structures and Metro station designs. The exhibition includes Diller Scofidio + Renfro's scrapped 'Bubble' reimagining of the Hirshhorn Museum and other schemes from Gensler and students from the UNLV School of Architecture.

Image courtesy Brooks + Scarpa

The inclusion of the 55-year-old Weaver Building is significant as it is the headquarters of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which wants to position itself in line with industry pushes to build a “just and equitable future for all citizens.”

Image courtesy Brooks + Scarpa

After the p...

Marcel Breuer's Wellfleet Cottage is at the center of a preservation battle on Cape Cod

2023-08-24T12:12:00-04:00

Campaigners seeking to save Marcel Breuer’s 1949 Wellfleet Cottage residence on Cape Cod have launched a $1.4 million fundraising effort aimed at saving the home from an expected demolition that’s likely to come in the next few years.

The Cape Cod Modern House Trust is spearheading the effort and says the home they have agreed to purchase from Breuer’s son is in danger adding to the tally of historic designs in the area they have been unable to save through preservation since 2016.

The house was at one time a haven and meeting place for Bauhaus alumni and intellectuals associated with Breuer and his wife Connie. The architect himself designed a large art studio addition in 1961 before adding another apartment and darkroom for his photographer son Tamas in 1968. The Trust says its sale will include all of the home's original furnishings (including pieces from the Eames' and Eero Saarinen), art collection, and private library, which will all be made available to public view after the ...

Sotheby's purchases Marcel Breuer's Brutalist Whitney for a rumored $100 million

2023-06-01T17:56:00-04:00

Sotheby’s said Thursday that it has purchased the Whitney Museum of American Art’s 1966 Brutalist building by Marcel Breuer on Madison Avenue and will move its headquarters there from York Avenue in 2025. The deal — which Sotheby’s and the Whitney refused to confirm in response to queries from The Times in April — finally resolves the fate of the Breuer building, which has hung in the balance since the Whitney moved down to the meatpacking district in 2015.

The auction house will operate a rotating exhibition space out of the building — in addition to hosting live auctions — beginning in September 2024. There are no plans for the subterranean level restaurant at this time. The Frick Collection, which has been leasing the building since the Met walked away in March of 2020, will officially move back into its $160 million Selldorf Architects-renovated original East 70th Street location in the months prior.

The New York Times reported a source mentioning the deal, which was brokered between the current landlords Whitney Museum and Sotheby's, was worth approximately $100 million. Sotheby's CEO Charles F. Stewart explained to the paper that it was simply a "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that we couldn’t pass up."

Frick Collection to vacate Marcel Breuer's 945 Madison Avenue building by next year

2023-04-24T17:53:00-04:00

The Frick Collection will vacate its Brutalist temporary home on New York’s Madison Avenue and return to Henry Clay Frick’s historic Fifth Avenue mansion in 2024. [...] The fate of the Breuer building—which was for decades the home of the Whitney Museum of American Art and, following that museum’s relocation to the Meatpacking District, a temporary outpost of the Metropolitan Museum of Art dubbed the Met Breuer—is unknown.

“Our residency at Frick Madison has been rewarding and productive, and we look forward to the remaining months of our time at 945 Madison Avenue, as we continue to gain new insights into our collection by seeing it reframed in this unprecedented way,” the Frick’s director Ian Wardropper said in an announcement.

The museum replaced The Met two years ago following that institution’s own ill-fated five-year run that ended in the spring of 2020. The Frick now expects its return to the original 1 East 70th Street location in March of next year after Selldorf Architects’ contested $160 million refresh. As The Art Newspaper reported, the future tenant (and owner) of 945 Madison currently remains in doubt while its current landlord, the Whitney Museum, looks for answers.

Marcel Breuer's Grieco House hits the market for $1.5 million

2022-06-27T17:08:00-04:00

This weekend, a home designed by modernist architect Marcel Breuer will hit the market in Andover. Named for its original owners, “The Grieco House” offers three bedrooms and three bathrooms in 3,721 square feet on 1.07 acres. The Janovitz + Tse Team of ModernMass at Compass is handling the listing at 81 Sunset Rock Road, which will come with a $1,500,000 price tag.

Breuer supposedly took the commission after the Grieco family dismissed Frank Lloyd Wright from the project following a disagreement. Its binuclear plan incorporates some of the lessons Breuer learned in the Bauhaus studio of Paul Klee that relate to relaxation and the spatial distribution of light. It is one of Breuer’s last completed New England residential designs following his tenure on the faculty of the Harvard GSD, and comes with a fully renovated interior, refurbished original woodwork, and brutalist wine cellar, according to the website ModernMass.

News of the listing comes just months after the demolition of another early binuclear design – the erstwhile Geller House on Long Island – which preservationists saw as evidence of the difficulties in maintaining some of the traditionally overlooked examples of midcentury modernism in America.

“There aren’t very many tools to aid the preservation of these houses,” Docomomo US executive director Elizabeth Waytkus told the New York...

Historic preservation and its (many) American discontents

2022-05-09T16:57:00-04:00

It seems incredible that a mid-century marvel like Geller I should fall victim to redevelopment while a government agency nearby intervenes to prevent someone from replacing an old front door with a similar-looking new one. In the world of historic preservation, however, a loose relationship between a building’s historical value and its likelihood of being protected is all too common.

The recent loss of Marcel Breuer’s first post-war Geller I design on Long Island is used to highlight the tension between developer-friendly preservation laws in smaller communities like Lawrence, and the prevailing approaches to preservation controlled predominantly by city dwellers and their “superficial attempts to reframe historic preservation as a progressive endeavor.”

Harvard Doctoral candidate Jacob Anbinder takes a broad look at the (highly political) history of American preservation efforts, which, he says, have shifted in recent decades to become an exclusive domain of the Democratic Party and its “growing base of white-collar professionals attempting to reconcile their material interests with their egalitarian ideals.”

Marcel Breuer's first binuclear house has been demolished in Long Island

2022-01-26T18:23:00-05:00

Marcel Breuer's first binuclear house, Geller I in Lawrence, New York has been demolished in the dead of night. Geller I is largely considered the project that propelled Breuer to private practice in New York and prompted the Museum of Modern Art to commission Breuer to design an exhibition house in the museum’s courtyard entitled The House in the Museum Garden in 1949.

The conservation advocacy organization chalked up the loss to a combination of changing local property dynamics and the inability of the town of Hempstead’s planning laws to prevent the destruction of a structure it says would have claims to both the New York State and National Register of Historic Places.

“Late last year, Docomomo US was alerted to plans to demolish the house for a larger project combing multiple lots. Docomomo US and our colleagues at Docomomo US NY/Tri-State, the Preservation League of New York State, Preservation Long Island and Caroline Rob Zaleski author of Long Island Modernism formed a coalition to work for a better preservation outcome,” the group’s statement explained.

A photo of the demolition underway this morning, January 26. Image courtesy of the Town of Hempstead, Landmarks Preservation Commission.

“In December, an application for local landmark status was submitted to the Town of Hempstead and enthusiastically received and supported by the Hempstead...

The fate of Marcel Breuer's Frick Madison building could fall into developer hands soon

2021-09-20T19:01:00-04:00

The Breuer building, an architectural icon and the former longtime home of the Whitney Museum of American Art, could soon have a new owner. The Whitney is considering the sale of the building and brokers are compiling lists of potential buyers, according to sources in the art world and real estate. Now the multi-million-dollar question is: If the building is sold, can it be developed?

The brutalist masterpiece know colloquially for its architect Marcel Breuer opened as the new home of the Whitney Museum in 1966. The building exchanged hands in 2015 as the Met expanded past Fifth Avenue for the first time to make room for the collection of billionaire cosmetics heir Leonard A. Lauder.

Previously on Archinect: Frick Collection opens in Marcel Breuer-designed temporary new home, Frick Madison

The Met Breuer’s ill-fared run ended in March of 2020 before reopening in the spring after a pandemic overhaul led by Selldorf Architects. The new Frick Madison will occupy the current site for the remainder of its lease, which runs through the end of next year.

Construction Update: Becker + Becker's transformation of a historic Marcel Breuer building is making progress

2021-08-16T15:20:00-04:00

A brutalist icon continues to make progress with its green makeover thanks to a new Passive House renovation by Becker + Becker.

The Pirelli Tire Building is perhaps one of New Haven, Connecticut’s most famous landmarks. The original nine-story structure was completed in 1970 and considered one of Marcel Breuer’s signature American buildings as well as one of the best examples of Brutalism in the country.

Architect and developer Bruce Becker is working to convert the former office building, famously owned by IKEA until recently, into a boutique hotel with 165 rooms that also has a net-zero rating with water, heating, and electricity provided on-site, a feature the architect says is unique to some of the challenges of the typology.

“The hospitality sector is probably one of the hardest ones to electrify, because the buildings tend to use energy more intensively,” Becker told Fast Company. “If they have on-site laundries, the convention is to use a lot of fossil fuels to run those. ...

Frick Collection opens in Marcel Breuer-designed temporary new home, Frick Madison

2021-03-23T18:07:00-04:00

While the Frick Collection's Gilded Age mansion in Manhattan undergoes a $160-million expansion and renovation project led by Selldorf Architects with Executive Architect Beyer Blinder Belle, highlights of the substantial art collection have found a temporary new home for the next two years inside Marcel Breuer's iconic Brutalist building on Madison Avenue.

The modernist Marcel Breuer building on Madison Ave just opened as the temporary art venue, Frick Madison. Photo: Joe Coscia.

The selection of works shown, and freshly juxtaposed within its unexpected new setting at Frick Madison, includes treasured paintings and sculptures by Bellini, Clodion, Gainsborough, Goya, Holbein, Houdon, Ingres, Piero della Francesca, Rembrandt, Titian, Turner, Velázquez, Vermeer, Whistler, and many others.

Frick Madison exterior. Photo: Joe Coscia

"The Frick has created a sequence of gallery spaces at Frick Madison that reflects the museum’s traditional emphasis on intimate encounters with both art and a...

Met Breuer to serve as temporary installation site for Frick Collection

2020-06-24T17:26:00-04:00

The Met Breuer building in New York City is set to become the new temporary home to the Frick Collection as the Frick's flagship facilities undergo an expansion and renovation led by Selldorf Architects.

The Marcel Breuer-designed Brutalist style building was the original home of the Whitney Museum, which opened in 1930 and decamped to new Renzo Piano Building Workshop-designed facilities in 2015. Since then, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has been using the building to display a collection of Modern art and architecture exhibitions. The Breuer site was slated to run an exhibition of the works of Gerhard Richter through the summer, but the exhibition closed prematurely in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, Artnet reports.

Rendering showing proposed expansion of Frick Collection facilities. Image courtesy of Selldorf Architects.

The hotly debated $160 million Frick expansion project received a green light to move ahead in March. The project will bring 27,000 square feet of new s...

New Haven's Marcel Breuer building takes next step towards hotel redevelopment

2020-01-09T14:30:00-05:00

Plans to transform the historic Pirelli Building on Sargent Drive into a hotel have moved forward, as a local developer has purchased the property from IKEA for $1.2 million. The developer, Bruce Becker, purchased the 2.76-acre property at 500 Sargent Drive on Dec. 31. The deed was recorded in city land records Friday.

The Brutalist, Marcel Breuer-designed Pirelli Tire Building in New Haven could be experiencing a new life as a hotel after sitting vacant for years.

The New Haven Independent reports that the property's previous owner, IKEA, had "paved the way for the Pirelli project by winning approval in November 2018 from the City Plan Commission for a detailed plan and coastal site plan for the conversion of the building into a hotel with up to 165 rooms."

Tom Burr / New Haven, Phase 1, 2017, installation view, Bortolami, New Haven

In 2017, artist Tom Burr staged the show Body/Building inside the gutted belly of the 1960s building to draw renewed attention to the abandoned landmark that was partially demolished ("amputated," as Burr called it) in 2003 to make way for the adjacent IKEA parking lot.

Marcel Breuer's Central Atlanta Library to receive exterior renovations

2019-07-29T12:37:00-04:00

The library, which opened in 1980, has been undergoing needed interior repairs and upgrades since last summer. But changing Breuer’s historic facade has been a point of contention since architecture firm Cooper Carry proposed cutting holes into the building to make way for the windows.

After an Atlanta-Fulton Public Library System survey found that 72 percent of participants "were interested in seeing more windows added to the building," it was insisted to become a reality. Naturally, with such an iconic building, there was cause for concern. The renovations are estimated to conclude "by September 2020 at the earliest."

New York City's big art switcheroo involves The Met, The Frick, The Whitney, and a certain Marcel Breuer building

2018-09-21T19:01:00-04:00

Henry Clay Frick’s venerable Old Master paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints and porcelain seem destined for a change of scene. In an unusual game of musical chairs, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Frick Collection announced today (21 September) that the Met will vacate the Brutalist Breuer building on Madison Avenue in 2020. Its departure will make way for the Frick to move in late that year while its mansion undergoes a renovation and expansion five blocks away.

Click here to catch up with Archinect's coverage of the not entirely undramatic Frick Collection expansion saga.

Atlanta Central Library: preservation groups nominate Marcel Breuer building to National Register of Historic Places

2018-09-10T19:03:00-04:00

On August 24, 2018, the Atlanta Fulton Central Library was unanimously nominated to the National Register of Historic Places and listed on the Georgia Register of Historic Places by the Georgia National Register Review Board. It will now be sent to the National Park Service for listing on the National Register. Fulton County spoke in opposition to the nomination. [...] Atlanta’s Central Library is currently closed for extensive renovations.

Previously: Central Atlanta Library: debate over adding windows to 'dark' Marcel Breuer building

Gropius, Breuer and Moholy-Nagy honored with English Heritage blue plaque at the Isokon Building

2018-07-09T16:04:00-04:00

A trio of Bauhaus visionaries were commemorated this morning with an English Heritage blue plaque, unveiled at the famed Isokon building where the honorees Walter Gropius, Marcel Breur and László Moholy-Nagy once lived and worked.

Celebrating the links between notable figures of the past with buildings of the present, the commemorative signs provide intriguing glimpses into the the built environment's past. From pioneering black figures who helped shape the city of London to Britain's prized literary figures, the plaques call attention to where these famous persons lived and worked, and where history was made.

The Isokon Building, which is itself, one of the finest achievements of modern design, presented a unique opportunity to honor part of that movement's legacy.

“To be able to recognize three prominent individuals of the Bauhaus – Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer and László Moholy-Nagy – together on the same building where they lived and worked is an excellent opportunity to hon...

Marcel Breuer and the Invention of Heavy Lightness

2018-06-12T23:18:00-04:00

How could an architect who had made the pursuit of lightness the essence of his design aspirations become one of the great form-givers of the aesthetics of weightiness?

In this rich examination of the work of Marcel Breuer, Barry Bergdoll explores the marked shifts between his early European and later American work, and finds a constant in the pursuit of lightness. In his efforts to reconcile vernacular traditions with modern expression and the conditions of contemporary life, Bergdoll argues, Breuer created buildings that "held heavy and light in remarkable equipoise."

An artist creates brutalist cuckoo clocks based on Germany's social housing

2018-06-05T14:55:00-04:00

Artist Guido Zimmermann's Cuckoo Block series present a brutalist take on the traditional cuckoo clock design. Based in Germany, Zimmermann's pieces are largely inspired by local brutalist housing blocks found in Frankfurt and Berlin. He has also ventured out to create clocks based on notable brutalist structures such as as Marcel Breuer’s Hotel Le Flaine, and Ernő Goldfinger's Glenkerry House.

Check out some of these unique creations below:

All images courtesy of Guido Zimmermann.

Central Atlanta Library: debate over adding windows to 'dark' Marcel Breuer building

2018-05-14T14:50:00-04:00

Drilling holes—for windows, granted—into famed architect Marcel Breuer’s final project could cost $1 million, and preservationists are peeved such plans are still on the drafting board. But despite community pushback, the window plans are still very much alive. Tuesday night, a crowd again convened at downtown’s Central Atlanta Library, a Breuer-designed Brutalist building, to argue against aspects of the $50 million plan to renovate the 38-year-old structure.

Current state of the Atlanta-Fulton Central Library building. Photo: Aleksandr Zykov/Flickr.

To drill or not to drill—that's at the center of a heated debate between the Atlanta–Fulton Public Library System, who would like to see additional windows to bring some natural light into their aging Marcel Breuer-designed Central Atlanta Library building, and preservationists, who insist that the concrete shell of the brutalist structure from 1980 must not be altered.

"What we’ve always heard about this building is it’s dark; it’s dingy; it’s dank, and the windows are a way to enliven this," Atlanta library director Gabriel Morley said about the building that once faced demolition not too long ago. "It’s a way to bring some inside out and some outside in."

Marcel Breuer's Brutalist Pirelli Building is slated for new life as a hotel

2018-04-24T14:53:00-04:00

Marcel Breuer's iconic Pirelli Building, once a symbol of New Haven's mid-century embrace of urban renewal and modern architecture, has spent the past two decades completely vacant, save for a recent art show.

Known for its Brutalist design featuring a 2-story gap, the mid-century masterpiece was taken over by IKEA in the late 90s. Upon acquiring the property, the Swedish furniture giant demolished the adjacent two-story wing to make room for parking spaces and have since left the remaining structure unoccupied, much to the anxiety of preservationists and civic leaders. Listed by the State Register of Historic Places, many believed it would become the victim of IKEA's demolition-by-neglect strategy.

With the New Haven Independent reporting on new interest in turning the Sargent drive property into a hotel, the building now has a shot at its adaptive reuse. IKEA has yet to announce updates on plans for the Pirelli Building, but the city's Economic Development Administrator Matthew ...

The peculiar history of New Haven's 'amputated' Marcel Breuer building

2017-10-09T14:09:00-04:00

Fifteen years after IKEA demolished part of it for a parking lot, a Marcel Breuer-designed office building in New Haven has become a stage for art. [...] Now, Burr is building on those explorations in his current show, Body/Building. Spread out over the first floor of Breuer’s gutted local icon, the show uses objects that weave together a story about himself, the site, and his city.

Tom Burr / New Haven, Phase 1, 2017, installation view, Bortolami, New Haven

New Haven-native, and now New York-based, artist Tom Burr tells the story of one of the city's most iconic, and controversial, buildings in his current show Body/Building, now on display inside the gutted belly of the 1960s brutalist Marcel Breuer-designed Long Wharf building.

"I’m interested in the fact that it’s amputated," Burr revealed, hinting at the partial demolition that the current owner, IKEA, saw necessary in 2003 to provide surface parking for its new store on the site.

Tom Burr / New Haven, Phase 1, 2017, installation view, Bortolami, New Haven

The show can still be visited until November 11 and is free of charge but requires an appointment.

Watch: an ode to Marcel Breuer's Snower Residence in Kansas City

2016-08-19T13:08:00-04:00

Completed in 1954 for Robert and Marianne Snower, Marcel Breuer designed the house site unseen. The Snowers had reached out to Breuer after seeing his work in a magazine, and lived there until it was bought in 2014.

The current owners, Rob Barnes and Karen Bisset, then renovated some key aspects of the home, although not much was needed. The home still contains many of Breuer's original custom furniture. The below video by Hufft Projects, "A Letter to Marcel", reimagines the initial contact made between the Snowers and Breuer, and takes a tour through the home.

A Letter To Marcel from Hufft Projects on Vimeo.

h/t The Kansas City Star

Related on Archinect:

Brute Force: Atlanta's endangered Breuer, Ban's disaster relief efforts, and a honking huge lobby for driverless vehicles on Archinect Sessions #63

2016-05-05T14:31:00-04:00

This week on the podcast, Donna, Ken and I discuss the uncertain future of downtown Atlanta's brutalist Public Library (the last building Marcel Breuer designed), how Shigeru Ban's relief efforts in Ecuador relate to his celebrity, and the emergence of a heavy-hitting lobbyist group for driverless cars in the US.

Listen to episode 63 of Archinect Sessions, "Brute Force":

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Download: this episode

Shownotes:

News pieces discussed in this show:

The campaign to save Marcel Breuer...

Breuer's Brutalist library in downtown Atlanta faces demolition

2016-04-29T12:40:00-04:00

The uncertainty looming over the building’s future is serving as a call to action for preservation groups in Atlanta and around the world who are beginning to mobilize. [...] Ironically, to gain the Breuer building, Atlanta lost its original Carnegie Library. [...] As evidenced by the transformation of the former Whitney Museum into the Met Breuer, it is clear that with a careful restoration, Breuer’s works can be an iconic piece of the urban fabric in which they reside

The Architecture and Design Center has begun a petition to protect the library, and has since garnered 1,023 signatures of 2,000 needed.

The petition states: "We ask that the Atlanta-Fulton Public Library System Board of Trustees take actions to protect the Central Library and Library System Headquarters Building, located at One Margaret Mitchell Square, from demolition and damaging renovation, whether the Library System maintains ownership or sells the building. We also ask that the building is renamed to honor its architect, the internationally renowned Marcel Breuer."

Related on Archinect:

As the Met moves into the old Whitney, can it shrug off the iconic building's associations with its former tenant?

2016-02-16T17:13:00-05:00

On March 18, when the Metropolitan Museum of Art opens an annex at Madison Avenue and 75th Street in Manhattan, it will be attempting to shrug off the ghost of a museum past. The specter is the Whitney Museum of American Art, which called the iconic Marcel Breuer building on that corner home for nearly five decades. In an eight-year deal, the Met is leasing the Breuer building from the Whitney— which relocated to its dazzling new Renzo Piano–designed home last year...

The Breuer-designed building will house some of the Met's modern and contemporary collection. But shrugging off the association between the Brutalist masterpiece and its former tenant may prove a tough task. For many, nothing say's "the Whitney" more than those protruding windows...

For related coverage, check out some of these older articles:

New movement urges to call Brutalism 'Heroic' instead

2015-11-25T12:17:00-05:00

There’s the legacy of Brutalism being such a negative term. It begins the conversation with negativity about these buildings, and this falls into the misreading of them as harsh, Stalinist, or some other kind of monstrous, mean architecture. The name plays into that mischaracterization that’s grown around a lot of them. I think “Heroic’” is a better title for what their actual aspirations were. The architects had a real sense of optimism. They were developing architecture for the civic realm.

Marcel Breuer Digital Archive

2012-06-13T19:24:00-04:00

The Marcel Breuer Digital Archive represents a collaborative effort headed by Syracuse University Library to digitize over 30,000 drawings, photographs, letters and other materials related to the career of Marcel Breuer, one of the most influential architects and furniture designers of the twentieth century.