A 1930 graduate of the famed Bauhaus School of Design in Germany, Bredendieck was a student and colleague of design luminaries such as Walter Gropius, Paul Klee, and László Moholy-Nagy.
Bredendieck emigrated to the United States in 1937 to escape the political turmoil of pre-war Germany. With his fellow Bauhaus emigres, he brought the Bauhaus design sense and educational methods to America, teaching first at the new Institute of Design in Chicago, and later founding the department of industrial design at Georgia Tech.