This Hungarian-born architect championed the International Style, a movement that stressed new technologies and "true" use of materials. He studied art in Vienna and then at the Bauhaus, where he later became a teacher. After fleeing Nazi Germany, Breuer emigrated first to Britain and then to the United States. In America, he was a key figure in the shaping of the Harvard School of Architecture.
Breuer received both criticism and accolades for a style that vacillated between feather-light and rock-solid. He was concerned with both the visual and the physical stability of his designs, and he utilized every opportunity to play with form and space. The strength and light weight of his bicycle inspired him to experiment with tubular steel in furniture design.
One of his best-known works is the "Wassily" chair (named after Wassily Kandinsky, the Bauhaus master for whose home the chair was originally designed). The tubular-steel chair, designed for residential use, was the first of its kind. Functional, linear, and solid in space, the "Wassily" chair was inspired by bicycle handlebars. It achieves a state of equipoise by using a minimum amount of materials. Its design incorporates the influences of various artistic movements -- the starkness of Bauhaus, the intersecting planes of De Stijl, and the exposed framework of the Constructivists.