As the founder and first director, he coined the name of what is probably the world's most famous school for art, architecture and design: the Bauhaus. In his programme there in the mid- 1920s he demanded a new aesthetic language limited to “typical basic forms”. The concept had already been applied in the “Typenmöbel” (modern furniture based on standardized elements) of the Deutsche Werkstätten, but in radicalizing it he effectively became the midwife of modern design. Before World War I he worked for two years at the office of Peter Behrens. His contribution to the Fagus factory, as early as 1911, p roduced not only one of the first examples of the new architecture but also some remarkable furniture for its interiors – including delicately ascetic armchairs and settees (today from Tecta). What is needed, said Gropius, is the “sparse integration of all the parts without reliance on the old clichés”. He saw his interiors like “Direktorenzimmer” (Director’s Office, 1923) or “Meisterhaus” (Master’s House, 1926) as laboratories of a future lifestyle. He equipped the director's room with his own furniture, including the famous cubic armchair F 51, a desk with glass shelving, and a meandering newspaper rack. Without Gropius, the history of furniture would have been very different. After all, in his four years from 1921 as “master of form” in the Bauhaus cabinet-making department he taught the likes of Josef Albers, Marcel Breuer, Alma Buscher and Peter Keler.