D1-3

Cube-sofa, 2-seater
Bauhaus Original
Peter Keler
1925

D1-3

The Cube as a sofa

The D1 chair, produced by Tecta according to Peter Keler’s original design, was one of the most radical approaches of its time. Together with Tecta, Keler later developed the two and three-seater sofa based on the D1 armchair with its signature cubic shape. Both products embody the same architectural concept of cubic furniture. A concept that would later influence an entire generation of designers, and inspired Le Corbusier to design his LC2 furniture.

When the Bauhaus relocated to Dessau in 1925, Keler decided against the move and opened his Weimar studio “Peter Keler Atelier, Weimar”. There he created models for the production of standardised seating furniture among other things.

At the same time, he worked on the development of a new horsehair fabric and the strap design for the wooden chair frames of his friend Marcel Breuer. He later sent Tecta the original remnants of the horsehair fabric from Weimar. They were used to cover the frame of the Breuer-Wassily armchair, a unique specimen that is now featured at the Cantilever Chair Museum in Lauenförde.

Peter Keler is one of the key thinkers who had a lasting impact on Tecta's Bauhaus DNA. Starting with the very first contact between Peter Keler and Axel Bruchhäuser in 1975. Keler lived in Weimar, where he held a professorship at the College of Architecture and Fine Arts for many years and later worked as a freelance architect and artist. Delighted to hear that Tecta wanted to produce his cradle, he gifted his original hand-coloured design to Axel Bruchhäuser. The cradle had meanwhile become a symbol of the Bauhaus. In 1923 Peter Keler had developed its legendary design, consisting of a circle, triangle and square, based on Wassily Kandinsky’s synaesthetic colour and form theory.

One year earlier, in 1922, Keler had joined the KURI Group (constructive, utilitarian, rational, international), which was active at the Bauhaus.“My bauhaus tecta journey is still alive in all my mind and bauhaus KURI bones,” wrote emeritus professor Peter Keler about his work and annual trips from East Germany to Tecta in Lauenförde.

Born in 1898, the Kiel-native already gravitated towards like-minded thinkers at an early age. The vision of transforming all aspects of life is reflected in his work as a painter, graphic artist, architect, photographer and furniture designer. In 1921, he left Worpswede for Weimar – like fellow artist Wilhelm Wagenfeld. Peter Keler enrolled at the Bauhaus, attended the preliminary course taught by Johannes Itten, and studied mural painting under Schlemmer and Kandinsky.

From 1975 Peter Keler worked as a “tecta employee” – as he described himself – for around seven years. In 1981 he wrote to Paul Klee’s son, Felix Klee in Bern, a German-Swiss art historian and painter, signing his letter from Lauenförde with “tecta -new bauhaus” as his address. In doing so he inadvertently laid the foundations of the current BauhausNowhaus campaign, the company’s way of showing that the ideas of the Bauhaus are still as relevant as ever and must be constantly thought forward.

The friendly cooperation with Tecta’s Axel Bruchhäuser was marked by conversations, visits, letters and joint trips, for example a visit to Erich Brendel in Wedel near Hamburg. Keler also played a significant role in a rather curious story: he helped Axel Bruchhäuser obtain the prototype of the first folding chair designed by his friend Marcel Breuer. Prof. Edmund Kesting had bought Breuer’s chair from the “Neue Kunst Fides” Gallery in Dresden in the late 1920s, and hidden it in Ahrenshoop during the Nazi era, rescuing it as “degenerate art” over two dictatorships. In order to successfully ship the valuable armchair from East Germany to Lauenförde, he resorted to a trick: the old frame was declared a used clothes horse and sent to Axel Bruchhäuser's mother. Thus, it evaded border control as a commodity. In 1976