Peter Behrens (1868–1940) was a German architect and graphic and industrial designer, and a pioneer of corporate design. Born in Hamburg and trained as a painter, he showed himself an architect with his own Jugendstil house at the Darmstadt Artists' Colony (1901), designed down to the towels. In 1907 he was a founding member of the German Werkbund and began working for the electrical company AEG, designing its logotype, products, publicity and buildings; for this he is considered the first industrial designer in history. Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius all worked in his office early in their careers.
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The Hagen Crematorium (1907), built from 1905 in Hagen-Delstern, was among the early works in which he turned to simple, rectilinear volumes and classical sources. The AEG Turbine Factory in Berlin (1909), his best-known work, is a steel-framed hall about 100 metres long with 15-metre windows set between bare steel columns whose bolts and joints show; it is considered the first attempt to bring restrained modern design to industrial building. The German Embassy, Saint Petersburg (1913) was admired by Hitler, according to Albert Speer.
