Marcel Breuer’s ‘Monumental Experiment in Concrete Design’

The Abbey Church of St. John the Baptist at Saint John’s University (Photograph by Greg Becker)

In 1953, Saint John’s University, in Minnesota, invited 12 well-known architects to come to Saint John’s and offered them a chance to design a master plan and new buildings for the growing campus and monastery. The monks who ran the university eventually chose Marcel Breuer, whose reputation was chiefly based on designs for modern houses and furniture, including the bent-steel Cesca and Wassily chairs. What resulted was an astonishing collection of Modernist buildings, including the breathtaking Abbey Church of St. John the Baptist. Scott Carlson describes Breuer’s work at the university in our Architecture Issue.