He was a Hungarian-born modernist, architect and furniture designer of Jewish descent. One of the masters of Modernism, Breuer displayed interest in modular construction and simple forms.
Known to his friends and associates as Lajkó, Breuer studied and taught at the Bauhaus in the 1920s. The Bauhaus curriculum stressed the simultaneous education of its students in elements of visual art, craft and the technology of industrial production. Breuer was eventually appointed to a teaching position as head of the school's carpentry workshop. He later practiced in Berlin, designing houses and commercial spaces. In the 1920s and 1930s, Breuer pioneered the design of tubular steel furniture. Later in his career he would also turn his attention to the creation of innovative and experimental wooden furniture.
Perhaps the most widely-recognized of Breuer's early designs was the first bent tubular steel chair, later known as the Wassily Chair, designed in 1925 and was inspired, in part, by the curved tubular steel handlebars on Breuer's Adler bicycle.
Herbert Beckhard,1902, HungaryHerbert Beckhard, who with Frank Richlan founded the New York architectural firm Beckhard Richlan Szerbaty & Associates, known as BRS+A, died on Sept. 11 at his home in Glen Cove, N.Y. He was 77.
The cause was complications of a fall, said John Arbuckle, an associate in the firm. Mr. Beckhard died just 13 hours after Mr. Richlan, who died the day before at 61.
Both men were once associated with Marcel Breuer, the internationally renowned architect who taught at the Bauhaus and Harvard. Mr. Beckhard joined Breuer as an associate in 1956 and became his partner and design coordinator in 1964.
Mr. Beckhard and Breuer collaborated on projects in Europe and the United States, including the Washington headquarters of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the University of Massachusetts Campus Center in Amherst and the Strom Thurmond Federal Office Building and Courthouse in Columbia, S.C.
They designed the St. Francis de Sales Church in Muskegon, Mich., and the Koerfer House in Ascona, Switzerland, for which they received awards from the American Institute of Architects. Projects resulting from their affiliation were featured in ''Architecture Without Rules: The Houses of Marcel Breuer and Herbert Beckhard'' (Norton, 1993).
Other projects
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