About... Ludwig Mies van der Rohe began his career in architecture in Berlin, working as an architect first in the studio of Bruno Paul and then, like Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius, Peter Behrens.

In the mid-1920's, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe began to design furniture, pieces that he conceived and created for particular interiors.

Brno chair - Mies Van Der Rohe Brno chair

Their experiments culminated in the virtuoso Brno chair designed between 1929 and 1930 with a chromed flat steel frame.

Two years later, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich designed what is perhaps his most famous creation. Created for the German Pavilion at the Barcelona International Exhibition, the Pavilion chair (Barcelona Chair and Barcelona Ottomann) was intended as a modern throne; a thick cushion upholstered in luxurious leather and set upon a curved metal frame in the shape of an X inspired by classical design furniture.

Marcel Breuer 's next breakthrough was his design of the cantilevered chair. Bauhaus design furniture - Marcel Breuer Ceska Chair - Classic Design Furniture

Marcel Breuer 's brilliant insight was to use non-reinforced steel tubing, thereby creating a free-swinging chair that approached his de-materialist ideal of "sitting on columns of air."

The cantilevered chair was his greatest commercial success and its design continued to evolve: the frame became lighter, the seat and back more pliant, the lines softer. Ceska Chair With Arms - Ceska Chair Without Arms

In 1928 Marcel Breuer left the Bauhaus and moved to Berlin and then to England in 1935 when the Nazis made it impossible for anyone who had been a part of the Bauhaus - a "hotbed of Bolshevism" -to practice architecture.

In 1937 Marcel Breuer joined Walter Gropius in his architectural practice and also at Harvard as a professor. Breuer moved to New York in 1946 to found his own architectural firm, and like Le Corbusier, choose concrete as his medium of choice.