In design, as in life, patience is a virtue. Plenty was required, to be sure, in the case of New York City’s Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park. Progress on the presidential memorial located on Roosevelt Island and named for FDR’s 1941 State of the Union address halted shortly after its architect, Louis Kahn, completed the design in 1974, at which time financial turmoil crippled the city. Only following an unexpected resurgence of interest some 30 years later did Kahn’s final work regain momentum.
Designer and Architect, Marcel Breuer (1902 - 1981) can be regarded as one of the most influential and important designers of the 20th century. As a young student at the Bauhaus Weimar, Breuer, who was Hungarian by birth, caught the eye with various furniture designs inspired by the Dutch De Stijl group. In 1925, at the tender age of only 23, he “invented” tubular steel furniture, a revolutionary development, to be considered his core contribution to the history of design. Breuer’s tubular steel designs, such as the famous Wassily armchair, the Bauhaus stool, or his various cantilever chairs are representative for the design of an entire epoch, and thus comparable only with Wagenfeld’s legendary table luminaire. In the shape of millions of copies they have long since taken a firm place among the great classics of Modernism. Yet it was not only tubular steel furniture that helped Breuer make an international splash. He was likewise a design history trail-blazer with his alu...









