Lost Masterpieces: Marcel Breuer's Ariston Club

Marcel Breuer's Ariston Club (1947) in Mar del Plata, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Marcel Breuer's Ariston Club (2005) in Mar del Plata, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Marcel Breuer's Ariston Club (2010) in Mar del Plata, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Marcel Breuer's Ariston Club (2010) in Mar del Plata, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Marcel Breuer's Ariston Club (2010) in Mar del Plata, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Marcel Breuer's Ariston Club in Mar del Plata, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Marcel Breuer

Parador Ariston

Mar del Plata, Buenos Aires, Argentina

The need for preservation; case in point: one of Marcel Breuer's lost masterpieces: The lucky clover shaped Parador Ariston in Mar del Plata, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Created by Marcel Breuer between 1946 and 1947, together with associates Carlos Coire and Eduardo Catalano. This beautiful structure, in its heyday, was used as a restaurant and nightclub. It is painful to see the building in its current condition.  Unfortunately it has reached an advanced state of disrepair. It has been abandoned for at least 20 years and the effects of sea air, weather and vandalism have taken their toll. Lack of financial resources partially caused by the economic crisis in Argentina and, possibly, incompetence and negligence of the officials in charge of heritage conservation have made Marcel Breuer's Parador Ariston into nothing more than a ruin.

 Construction Photograph from 1947

 Construction Photograph from 1947

During his 1947 trip to South America, Marcel Breuer collaborated with Eduardo Catalano, Francisco Coire and other architects in the "Buenos Aires Group" on a club for dining and dancing in the beach resort of Mar del Plata. Pilotis supported two cloverleaf-shaped concrete slabs, which formed the floor and roof of the upper story and cantilevered over a core with a reinforced-concrete stair. Modular windows filled large expanses of the curved walls. Catalano oversaw the construction when Marcel Breuer returned to the United States. Some elements of the design were changed during construction, including the form and material of the staircase and the transfer of the glass-walled kitchen from the upper floor to the ground level. After a storm destroyed the sculptural, independent sign designed by Catalano, signage was applied directly to the surface of the building, much to Marcel Breuer's dismay. Curving forms were rare in Marcel Breuer's work but had already appeared in the balcony of the Macnabb House and an organically-shaped structure included in the model for the Garden City of the Future.

Image Credits: 

NOVA68.com, Archive of Affinities, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Marcel Breuer Papers, Syracuse University Library.

Flickr / ekainj