Marcel Breuer (1902-1981), born in Hungary and trained at the Bauhaus by Walter Gropius from 1920-24, is heralded as having produced the first tubular steel armchair, his pieces pioneering the demand for tubular steel furniture throughout the 1920s and 1930s. When the Bauhaus moved to Dessau in 1925, Breuer designed furniture for the new campus and became head of the furniture workshop, a position that he held until 1928. Also in 1925, Breuer created the famous tubular steel Wassily chair, purportedly inspired both by constructivist aesthetics and by the handlebars of his new bike. In 1928 he started a private practice in Berlin and came out with his Cesca cantilever chair and stool, named after his daughter and probably inspired by Mies Van der Rohe.

In 1972, Axel Bruchhäuser and his father started reproducing old and sometimes forgotten products from the Bauhaus masters and other Modernists. In some cases, starting from a photograph they meticulously reconstructed a furniture piece and then presented it to the designer. For nearly 30 years TECTA has been devoted to the re-edition of original and licensed furniture designs of the Modern Period. The famous German architectural theorist Prof. Heinrich Klotz wrote about TECTA: "TECTA is now realizing what the Bauhaus masters waited for in vain. Many of the furniture designs of the international avantgarde of the 1920s, for example Breuer's glass case and folding chair or Gropius' Fagus Factory armchair, have been produced by machine for the first time by TECTA and thus become reasonably priced articles for our homes. In this respect TECTA is fulfilling in Germany a function similar to that of Cassina in Italy and Knoll International in the USA."