After serving an apprenticeship as a painter and restorer, Bernhard Pankok studied painting at the Düsseldorf Art Academy in 1889-1891 and afterwards in Berlin. In 1892 Bernhard Pankok went to Munich, where he had his own painting studio. Pankok worked as a freelance artist and graphic artist, doing illustrations for the journals "Pan" and "Jugend". Alongside Hermann Obrist, Bruno Paul, and Richard Riemerschmid, Pankok was a founding member of the Munich Vereinigte Werkstätten für Kunst im Handwerk, which was modeled on the British Arts and Crafts movement. In 1897 Pankok began to design furniture. He showed work at numerous exhibitions, including the seminal 1900 "Exposition Universelle et Internationale" in Paris. In 1900 Bernhard Pankok was commissioned by the art historian Konrad Lange to design "Haus Lange" for him. Bernhard Pankok designed both the architecture and the entire interior of Lange's Tübingen home in 1901/02. In 1901 Bernhard Pankok was invited to teach at the Königliche Lehr- und Versuchswerkstätte in Stuttgart. In 1913 he became head of it and in this capacity merged the teaching facilities with the Kunstgewerbeschule. Between 1908 and 1913 Pankok also designed the building for the Akademie der Bildenden Künste am Weißenhof which resulted from the merger. Bernhard Pankok designed other buildings in Stuttgart, such as "Haus Rosenfeld" (1909-1912). So versatile and prolific was Pankok that he also designed opera stage sets and salons for ocean liners and even the Zeppelin passenger cabins. Bernhard Pankok's versatility is proverbial: he worked as an architect, furniture designer, interior decorator, painter and graphic artist. In 1907 he was a co-founder of the Deutscher Werkbund.