Projects by Name

Mundipharama was the second building that Marcel Breuer and Associates designed for Mortimer Sackler, a physician and entrepreneur who made his fortune in the pharmaceutical industry. After seeing photographs of St. John’s Abbey Church at the 1972 exhibition “Marcel Breuer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art,” Sackler requested that a similar folded-plate concrete wall be used for the Mundipharma headquarters and manufacturing plant. Also at the client’s request, Breuer and his partner Robert Gatje sank the lower level partially below grade with only the clerestory windows visible below the folded concrete wall of the upper floor. Like many other projects from this era, Breuer’s New York office designed the project, but the Paris office oversaw construction. Interior details included a spiral staircase with cantilevered treads and a metal railing that seemed to float above a glass balustrade.