Projects by Name

Sigfried Giedion, architectural historian and secretary general of CIAM (Congrès internationaux d'architecture moderne), planned to build a group of modern apartment buildings in Doldertal, a suburb of Zurich. He first offered the commission to the cousins, Alfred and Emil Roth, but later asked Breuer to review the designs. In 1933, a collaborative agreement was arranged among the three architects. Breuer and the Roths proposed two-story buildings raised on pilotis with a small penthouse structure. The houses contained apartments of various sizes, almost all of which had access to an outdoor terrace. The ground floor housed a glass entrance lobby, a covered carport and communal laundry and store rooms. The steel-skeleton building had reinforced concrete floors and stucco-covered brick exterior walls, while the walls of the penthouse were wood frame covered in plywood and panels of asbestos cement. Objections from neighbors, along with problems with the building authorities and financing caused significant delays in construction but two of the three buildings were completed in January 1936. Disputes among the participants arose when Breuer's name was omitted from the attribution for the project in the Milan Triennale and an article in "Das Werk."