TECTA
Germany

Tecta Bruchhäuser & Drescher OHG is a furniture manufacturing company based in Lauenförde, Germany. Our product line consists of Bauhaus re-editions, such as the iconic cantilever chair, and derivative designs. Tecta was founded in 1956 by the architect Hans Könecke. The company name comes from Latin, and roughly means »to design« or »to execute«.

In 1972 Werner and Axel Bruchhäuser took over the company. Bruchhäuser remains in charge to this day, jointly since 2001 with his nephew Christian Drescher.
In 1979 Axel Bruchhäuser established the Burg Beverungen Chair Museum.
Between 1990 and 2003 the architects Alison & Peter Smithson extended and redesigned the company site to form a unique Tecta landscape. In 2003 the Chair Museum moved into the newly built Cantilever Chair Museum and Tecta Archive, designed by Peter Smithson in Lauenförde.

Tecta is a medium-sized company and produces all of its furniture at its own facility in Lauenförde. Approximately 40 people are employed in our joinery, metalworking, upholstery and wicker workshops. Numerous items of furniture created by avant-garde designers of the 1920s, such as Walter Gropius’ Fagus armchair or Marcel Breuer’s glass cabinet, have been mass-produced for the first time by Tecta. In this way, Tecta fulfils a function similar to Cassina in Italy and Knoll International in the USA. Tecta’s faithful and licensed re-editions of Bauhaus models are approved by the Bauhaus Archive in Berlin and bear as an imprint the Bauhaus symbol designed by Oskar Schlemmer in 1922 at the original Bauhaus school in Weimar.

Tecta also works with a variety of contemporary architects and artists, such as Sergius Ruegenberg, Jean Prouvé, Alison & Peter Smithson, Stefan Wewerka and Al Hansen to create modern furniture based on Bauhaus principles. Our cantilever chairs provide a good example of this approach. While Tecta produces re-editions of original Bauhaus cantilever chair designs by Marcel Breuer and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, we have also developed new Bauhaus-derived models such as the B25. During the 1980s we also designed, in close cooperation with Stefan Wewerka, the Einschwinger chair (literally ‘single swinger’), which is formed from a single steel tube. This unique design represents the ultimate reduction of the cantilever chair design principle.