Breuer Houses

Rating:
Summary: Not enough Juice.
Review: Trying to pin down the work of Marcel Breuer is hard let alone putting into a neat package and keeping it only to residential. Ms.Driller's Book,Breuer Houses,not only misses some very important aspects of Marcel Breuer's work, the presentation of it is very poor also. Graphically, the pictures, plans, & drawings are small and illegiable. To try and analyze the plans with her descriptions is a chore. The cover is a variation off the catalogue produce for Breuer for an exhibition organized by the Metropolitan Museum of Art designed by Chermayeff & Geismar in 1972.( But then if your are just an architectural student now you would not know that.) The book wants to be about the houses but she only writes about a few and then catalogues the rest of the houses in the back. She also missed a house. Kacmarcik's in St. Paul MN., which is in the Masaello's Book Architecture Without Rules. Breuer's architecture was about technique,materials, the courage of conception and the drawings are critical to their delivery.Not having sections or details leaves me to wonder what her dissertation looked like. Ms. Driller's comments run from fact to opinion and comments such as "I never got into the house but saw it form the outside" I think misses the whole point of a Breuer piece. Did we really get a book with "the fragrance of dimensions, the juice of stone", I do not think so.That one intangible ingredient is also missing, that one percent which is art.