Interviews with the best designers of the red dot design award 2007: Martin Bergmann, Harald Gründl and Gernot Bohmann

In the red dot award: product design 2007 Eoos received two red dot: best of the best for the outstanding design of the chair "Andoo" and the bathtub "Sundeck". red dot online interviewed the Eoos designers: Martin Bergmann, Harald Gründl and Gernot Bohmann.

What inspired you to create this special product and what was your intention behind it?

Sundeck: Creating an object that has different lives and that transforms itself.

Andoo: To remove so much from a chair that it is reduced to the technological minimum.

What does being awarded the red dot: best of the best mean to you?

A recognition of the joint effort of a designer and producer to focus on design and to be successful at it.

What particular challenges do you think designers are facing in this day and age?

To identify themes that have a positive effect on the future for all and to lend them a form already today.

As a designer, what would you still like to achieve in the future?

To create things that we can’t identify.

What do you think is the economic significance of design?

Economics is our partner when it comes to becoming culturally active, whereas design is a great multiplier of ideas. However, we are much more interested in the cultural significance than in the economic significance. EOOS pursues questions such as: Where to our objects come from? How do they accompany us? And where are they going?

Andoo: the logic of the minimal

The Andoo chair has been designed with an approach that could well be described as “minimal art.” The words “calm and clarity” best summarise the appearance of this elegant piece of furniture, the appeal of which is marked by a specific aesthetics derived from the interplay of its materials. The emphasis has been placed on how wood and leather can be combined to lend it a high degree of precision. The materials used for the Andoo chair focus the attention on an outline that is rigorously stripped to its essentials; yet the materials seem to complement and merge into one another. At the same time this also produces an interplay of hard and soft materials that suits its very function. The elastically sprung back and the pocket springs in the seat lend Andoo the comfort of an armchair. The elegant as well as clear appearance of this chair offers highly interesting facets when viewed from different angles. Looking from the front, back or side of the chair, one notices subtle differences of tiny details – depending on how the materials meet. The perception of this chair is a highly specific one, revealing a logic of the minimal that comes to life and can be re-experienced anew with every day of use.

Sundeck: Like a day at the sea

On hearing the word “sun deck,” the majority of people associate, for instance, one of the sunlight-flooded coves of the Côte d’Azur and the atmosphere of a serene and natural lightness of being. The Sundeck bathtub stimulates such positive associations with its aesthetic and consistent design. When closed, the two-part “deck” looks like a settee with comfortable neck rests; only when opened is it revealed to be a bathtub. The two cover parts of the bathtub slide to the sides like the roof of a convertible car. This “visual illusion with its positive surprise effect” lends the bathtub a highly understated appearance, yet it also imparts the impression of luxury and comfort. This luxurious appeal is also evoked by maritime-quality borrowings and the comfortable details of the “deck” cover. The hand-sewn deck cushions, the neck rolls and a step, as well as the white acrylic finish of the tub itself fuse with the wooden surfaces of the furniture into a coherent language of form.