In 1932 architect and furniture designer Marcel Breuer lost the copyright for many of his tubular steel designs to Dutch designer Mart Stam. This setback – and the attraction of new materials such as aluminium and laminated wood – led Breuer to design additional furniture series in the 1930s.
In October 1932, he had filed a patent application for a spring-type tubular steel chair without back legs in Berlin. Of course, other designers already had applied this principle, but Breuer made a decisive leap forward in 1933 when he applied it also to solid materials like aluminium or wood, as in the lounger shown here. In late October 1933, Breuer filed the respective patent in Switzerland, and in November he took part in the Concours international du meilleur siège en aluminium of the Alliance Aluminium Cie. in Paris. The manufacturers’ jury and a specialized jury including Sigfried Giedion and Walter Gropius independently awarded Breuer’s lounger first prize.
Since the early 1930s, aluminium had been seen as the modern material of choice for furniture making. With his lounger, Breuer provided a convincing example of how this material could be used in streamlined production processes and minimalist design to enable the perfect realization of modern design ideals.
The four prototypes for the Paris competition were manufactured by the Swiss firm Embru-Werke, which began mass production directly following the competition. In 1934, Wohnbedarf in Zurich received exclusive rights for marketing and sales. But since the sales figures were not satisfactory, production was stopped shortly thereafter. Starting in 1936, the model was produced in galvanized steel and sold as a garden lounger.
Text: Otakar Máčel
