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FLOORPLAN

Sold Subject to Contract

“Bathed in light and sea air, strolling onto the balcony is like walking from the bridge of a modern liner onto the deck”

Sea Lane House is one of the most distinguished examples of 20th-century domestic architecture, renowned as the only house in Britain wholly designed by the great Bauhaus-trained architect and designer, Marcel Breuer, while working in collaboration with FRS Yorke. The Grade II-listed, six-bedroom modernist home overlooks East Preston's stretch of West Sussex coastline in one direction and gentle countryside in the other. Streamlined and nautical, the house is largely unaltered from the original design. Many of its original features remain, and so subsequently the house needs some updating.

Sea Lane House II

East Preston, West Sussex

£1,250,000

Freehold

Architect: Marcel Breuer

FLOORPLAN

or call +44 (0)20 3795 5920

“Bathed in light and sea air, strolling onto the balcony is like walking from the bridge of a modern liner onto the deck”

History

Marcel Breuer

Sea Lane House was perhaps one of the two most important achievements of Breuer’s fruitful stay in Britain between 1935 and 1937, the other being his design for the Isokon Long Chair.

Born in Pécs, Hungary in 1902, Marcel Breuer briefly studied art in Vienna before joining the Bauhaus in the 1920s. First a student and then a teacher, he became head of the celebrated furniture workshop.

On leaving the Bauhaus, Breuer practised as an architect in Berlin before fleeing the Nazi regime and moving to London in 1935, where he stayed for two years. In 1939 he was invited by Walter Gropius (the founder of the Bauhaus and former teacher of Breuer) to work at Harvard University. At Harvard, Breuer taught pupils who went on to become some of America’s celebrated architects including Philip Johnson, Paul Rudolph and I.M. Pei.

In America, Breuer initially worked in an architecture practice with Gropius before forming his own firm with offices in New York and Paris. Breuer produced numerous important buildings before his death in 1981 including the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and the UNESCO headquarters in Paris.

Sea Lane House

The house was originally commissioned for a plantation owner, James Macnabb, who is thought to have never occupied it (due, in part, to the outbreak of World War II in 1939). In 1943, it was bought by Richard Papelian, an engineer and celebrated figure within the automotive industry (he is perhaps best known for introducing windscreen wipers and car radios to Britain). Papelain fell in love with Sea Lane House thanks to what he called its “technical excellence’” and lived there until his death in 1986, taking careful care of it throughout his life. Papelian’s family still owns the house.

Sea Lane House is the only surviving pre-War building in Europe by Breuer. It is also considered the best-preserved example of Breuer’s early architectural work anywhere in the world.

N.B. An extensive and attractive archive of material relating to the history of the house will be made available to any buyer.

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