Architect. In 1920 he learnt sculpting at the Vienna Academy but a few months later he went to Weimar where he became a pupil of Walter Gropius. He received the certificate of mastership in 1925 and moved to Dessau together with Gropius' school where he became a teacher and leader of the joiner's shop. His Dessau years were marked by his first tubular metal chair which made his name famous. In 1928 he moved to Berlin and in 1932 his first building in Wiesbaden was finished. He was awarded two first prizes at an international competition in Paris in 1933. A residential building of his design was built in Zurich reflecting new principles in an exemplary way.

He settled down in Budapest in 1934. Together with József Fischer and Farkas Molnár he was awarded the First Prize at an international competition where plans had been invited for the International Fair in Budapest and another one for a hospital in Szeged. He was not admitted to the Chamber of Architects so he was not allowed to work as an architect. He went to England in 1935 and was invited to the Faculty of Architecture at Harvard, USA in 1937. First he worked together with Gropius and from 1941 onwards on his own. He left the university in 1946 to open an office of his own in New York which was followed by another one in Paris in the 1950s. As an advisor he contributed to the reorganization of the faculty of architecture at the universities in Buenos Aires and Bogota in 1947. The Technical University, Budapest conferred the honorary degree on Breuer in 1970. In every work of his, he applied the national principles of modern art with good taste.