Stuttgart designers Markus Jehs and Jürgen Laub have been working together under the name of jehs+laub for more than 14 years. Their main focus of activity is on furniture, lamps and interior design. In 1992, they graduated as product design majors from the design university of applied sciences, the “hdpk” in Schwäbisch-Gmünd, a leading private university for the creative industries, and in 1994, they founded their design studio jehs+laub.

In response to the question of how the relationship between the designer and manufacturer works, they reply:  "It is like the relationship between a mother and father." Both see the designer as the father. Laub adds: "The manufacturer is the mother. She is the one who needs to hatch and develop, and the shared child comes along in the end."

The successful collaboration between Brunner, the German contract furniture manufacturer from Baden, and Italian design studio Archirivolto began with a telephone call in 2010. “We introduced ourselves as passionate designers of plastic chairs,” says Claudio Dondoli. And success followed soon after – with the design of twin, the first plastic chair in contract furniture quality.

Roland Schmidt and Brunner now share a history that goes back more than 20 years: "Brunner and I challenge each other," says Schmidt. Everything has to be just right in the end: aesthetics, function and economic viability. The journey to this point resembles a ping-pong match. Brunner's main source of inspiration is Roland Schmidt's passion for clear, elegant designs, which are wonderfully practical, yet inconspicuously so.

Industrial designer Wolfgang C.R. Mezger lives up to this ideal with a small team of professional designers, specialising mainly in public design and home, kitchen, bathroom, office and public venue furniture design.

After initially training in typography and pursuing various musical projects, Wolfgang C.R. Mezger studied design at the Design School in Schwäbisch Gmünd, where he graduated in 1979 and won the Braun Prize in 1980. He then worked as a freelance designer before founding his own design company in Eislingen in 1983, moving to Göppingen in 2007.

To date, his company has won more than 50 international design prizes, including:
Best Of NEOCON, Chicago
Good Design Award, Chicago
RED DOT, Essen
Dutch Furniture Prize, Amsterdam
Roscoe Design Award, New York
Design Center, Stuttgart
iF Design Award, Hanover

Between 1981 and 1989, Mezger taught on various university design courses in Berlin, London and finally in Schwäbisch Gmünd.

Towards the mid-1990’s, Blasius Osko and Oliver Deichmann were inspired by the formerly divided city of Berlin which absorbed young creatives from everywhere. After finishing their studies at the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK), they started their professional cooperation and founded the design studio “Die Wunschforscher” [the researchers of desire].

They created objects on the threshold between design, new inventions and art. Parallel to that, the designers developed concepts for fashion and music events. In 2005, they renamed their studio “osko+deichmann”.

The works by osko+deichmann have already been part of exhibitions at renowned institutions and museums: Louvre Paris, Vitra Design Museum Weil am Rhein and Berlin, Cube Gallery Manchester, MoMA Berlin, Guggenheim Museum Berlin, VIA Gallery Paris, Holon Museum, and at the Design Biennial at Saint-Étienne (France). In 2011, the Berlin designers started their collaboration with contract furniture manufacturer Brunner.

Martin Ballendat was born in Bochum in 1958 and gained a degree in industrial design from the Folkwang Design School, part of Essen University, in 1983. He has been a successful designer for more than 20 years.
After working for more than 10 years in leading positions in the furniture industry, he expanded his design studio as an independent designer, today employing some 12 people at two locations in Austria and Germany.

He has been working in projects for renowned brands in 12 different countries (e.g. Germany, Austria, Italy, the UK, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the U.S.).

“Design Ballendat” has won more than 70 design prizes and awards, including: Best of NEOCON Chicago / RED DOT / IF / „Best of the Best“ Cologne trade fair, Focus-Gold LGA Stuttgart as well as prizes in Italy, Japan, the UK and the Netherlands. For the past more than 10 years, Martin Ballendat has lectured as a visiting professor at the Design faculties of the Graz and Salzburg (Austria) universities of applied sciences.

His office and studio are located in a completely renovated Art Nouveau mansion near the Austrian border, featuring its own CAD studio, model workshop and showroom.

Developing products and product systems offering a useful combination of utilitarian, ecological functionality and comprehensive emotional qualities: Gerhard Reichert has been working in complex global contexts gathering a great variety of experience in diverse industries and markets, and his clients benefit from the rich experience background and the resulting synergies – the quality of thinking.

After his graduation in engineering, he enrolled in a course of study for the design of capital goods at the Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design.
Between 1993 and 1997, he was a project leader with MH Design Engineering in Germany and Switzerland;
from 1997 through 2004, he was a project leader with the De Lucchi studio in Milan, Italy. During his time in Milan, he founded his own design studio, where today office furniture, medical technology, capital goods, lights and lighting technology are developed. Sometimes including taking care of the entire process, starting from the concept all the way through realization.

The products developed there, e.g. for brands like Artemide, Armani, Brunner, iGuzzini, Leifheit, Molteni, are being marketed around the globe, and quite a number of them have been awarded design prizes.
From 2004 to 2007, he taught as a professor at the Design faculty of Aachen University of Applied Sciences.
Since 2007, he has been active as professor and dean for the product design course of studies at HfG Design College at Schwäbisch Gmünd near Stuttgart.

“The more functional and more emotional a product is, the more it will be appreciated, and the longer it will be used, thus easing the burden on our environment."

Thomas M. Fürst wurde 1942 in Düsseldorf geboren. Er studierte von 1963 bis 1967 an der Technischen Hochschule, Aachen (Parallelstudium: Steinbach, Mehnert, Bart und Bartels). Seine ersten Erfahrungen sammelte er schon während des Studiums als Mitarbeiter im Büro Prof. Gottfried Böhm in Köln, dem „Nobelpreisträger“ der Architektur.

Seit 1980 ist er Vorsitzender des AIV Architekten- und Ingenieurverein Düsseldorf. Nach 38 erfolgreichen Jahren im Architekturbüro HPP Hentrich-Petschnigg & Partner KG in Düsseldorf wird er 2006 Geschäftsführender Gesellschafter der Fürst Architects GmbH.

1962 born in the city of Schleswig, Germany

1988 designer for Castelli S.p.A. and at studio Giancarlo Piretti, Italy

1990 Graduate in Industrial design at the Muthesius School in Kiel, Germany

1990–1992 designer for Tecno S.p.A., Italy

1992–1996 designer in wiege Wilkhahn-Entwicklungs GmbH, Germany

since 1997 freelance designer, work with several international companies

Awards

Design Champion Design Center Stuttgart 1st Prize, Germany 1991

Admission for the permanent exhibition of the Stedeljik Museum of Modern Art in Amsterdam, Netherlands 1994

Design-Week-Award Great Britain 1st Prize, GB 1995

IF Hannover Product Design Award Best of category, Germany 1995, 1996, 2006, 2007

IDEA- Gold Industrial Design Excellence Award, USA 1996

Bundespreis Produktdesign of the German Design Council, Germany 1998

Japanese Good Design Award, Japan 1999

Red dot design award, Germany 1992, 1995, 1997, 1998, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2006, 2010

Best of Neocon Gold Medal, USA 2005, 2010

The internationally acclaimed and multiple award-winning Ippolito Fleitz Group with offices in Stuttgart, Berlin and Shanghai see themselves as "identity architects". The diverse projects embody a message of new beginnings, targeted change and shaking up familiar perceptions. At the same time, this identity of interdisciplinary work between interior design, product design and branding – and in doing so the opposing influences and ideas – frequently leads to new and definitive solutions.

Brunner hasn't just counted on this energy since beginning to collaborate on PARA VERT. The Stuttgart-based firm has supported the brand's clearly perceptible evolution by developing national and international trade fair appearances, designing new showrooms, communication projects and collaborating with the interior sector. Tilla Goldberg, Head of Product Design at the Ippolito Fleitz Group, has taken this collaboration to a whole new level with the design for PARA VERT:

"We see radical change in the same way as Brunner does, particularly when it comes to new working environments. We came up with the idea of a product that, at first glance, didn't fit into Brunner's product range – but was a good fit in terms of the brand's ability to provide new solutions for spaces and people – and now we're planting this new way of thinking with PARA VERT."