Breuer Backrest Chair B40 | Original Bauhaus Model

The B40 thrives on small details that transform its cubic shape into elegance. Here, the geometry follows the body. The backrest is slightly bent backward at the height of the lumbar spine and flows into a curve that makes the chair easy to carry. Structurally perhaps unnecessary, but highly aesthetic, is the double bracing at the front, which stiffens the chair and sets a rhythm in the room, as if Breuer had created crystalline music here – and not a chair with high practical value.

With his brilliant idea of transferring the lightweight construction of bicycles to furniture design, Marcel Breuer (1902–1981) opened entirely new paths for the furniture industry. “My sudden idea, which came to me while cycling about the material of the bicycle handlebar leading to the construction of tubular furniture – unexpectedly it spread all over the world,” wrote Marcel Breuer in 1937. His tubular steel furniture became the epitome of elegance and lightness of a world on the rise – much like our own. This impulse can be physically experienced in the B40.