Projects by Name

Between 1972 and 1974, Breuer and his partner Herbert Beckhard designed a house in Lake Carmel, New York for a client named David Picker. The house was never built, but presentation drawings reveal a composition of sliding rectangular volumes surrounded by stone retaining walls that defined an outdoor terrace containing a pool. The stone-clad house took advantage of the steep grade of the site. A long wooden walkway approached the low volume of the upper floor, which contained several bedrooms accessed from a central foyer. The larger, lower floor was set into the hillside and contained the living room, dining room and kitchen, along with storage areas. A smaller volume containing a covered, enclosed porch could be accessed from the kitchen. The roofs of the upper and lower levels angled upward toward the center of the house but appear offset in side elevation, rather than meeting in a point. As in many of Breuer’s houses, the street façade consisted of stark planar walls with few openings, while the garden façade featured many windows to open the house up to the exterior view. In the end, financial difficulties prevented the client from building the house.