It was built for the Bauhaus Werkschau (English: Work show) exhibition which ran from July to September 1923.

It was the first building based on Bauhaus design principles, which revolutionized 20th century architectural and aesthetic thinking and practice.

[1] In keeping with the Bauhaus philosophy of teaching via practical experience and working with industry, a number of students were involved with the building project.

Saving energy was an important consideration as the deprivations of World War I fuel shortages were still fresh in mind.

It had coal-fired central heating and a gas-fueled Junkers boiler in the bathroom, and a gas kitchen stove.

[5] The house was built away from the main Bauhaus campus, at 61 am Horn, a street of upper-middle class Gründerzeit villas.

[8] Alfred Arndt and Josef Maltan (1902-1975) planned the interior colour scheme, which was rediscovered during restoration work carried out in 1998–99.

This displeased the director of the Bauhaus Walter Gropius, as he thought that the school being well known for designing products for children would lessen its academic standing.

[10] The architects Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier expressed admiration for the design, whilst traditionalists like Paul Schultze-Naumburg were critical.

The Bauhaus Museum Weimar has a copy of the toy cupboard designed by Siedhoff-Buscher, which was made at around the same time as the exhibition.

[14][15] The house remained empty until September 1924 when it was sold to a lawyer, Franz Kühn, who engaged the architect Ernst Flemming to make a number of alterations.

[13] In April 1938 Kühn was compelled to sell the house to the German Labour Front, (German:Deutsche Arbeitsfront (DAF)), who planned to demolish it and build an Adolf Hitler School on the plot, however World War II put a halt to these plans.

In September 1945 the occupying Soviet military forces confiscated the house from the DAF and put it under the administration of Weimar City Council, who let the property to residential tenants.

The academy was a government agency that operated as the central research institution for architecture and construction in East Germany.

He restored parts of the house that had been damaged by age and damp and began the process of getting the property historic monument protection status, which it was given in 1973.