Projects by Name

Breuer and Yorke created this large model of the Garden City of the Future for the British Cement and Concrete Association. It was originally displayed at the Ideal Homes Exhibition in 1936 and represented residential and business sections of a "new seaside town in England." This project allowed Breuer to explore concepts of large-scale city planning and concrete construction. Breuer incorporated forms from earlier projects and would later reuse many of the concepts found in this scheme. Multi-story apartment blocks raised on columns were separated from the business district by a shopping complex arranged around an interior court. The shopping complex with its stepped, cantilevered façade supported by trusses evoked the structural system of the Elberfeld Hospital Project. The theater resembled Breuer's earlier scheme for the Ukrainian State Theater in Kharkov and vehicular traffic was funneled through a cloverleaf like that Breuer had designed for Potsdamer Platz in Berlin. Breuer also created double-Y shaped office buildings, whose form may have been inspired by Hans Poelzig's project for a library addition to the Reichstag. Breuer would use this double-Y shape for many of his later modular concrete office buildings, such as the IBM building in La Gaude. The project was included in a number of other exhibitions over the course of Breuer's career including the Building Trades Exhibition in 1936, the one-man show at Harvard in 1938 and the 1972 retrospective of Breuer's career at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.