Images courtesy of NEW TENDENCY
Jessica Hannan talks to Manuel Goller, one third of Berlin design studio NEW TENDENCY about their bespoke work with Alex Eagle, working with the city’s chilled-out creatives and nearly getting sued by Bauhaus (the German DIY megastore)
JH: Your university collective “My Bauhaus Is Better than Yours” received a lot of press attention, tell us about that?
MG:We founded the collective with a group of classmates whilst studying at the Bauhaus University in Weimar. The name was a tongue-in-cheek reaction to the huge responsibility we felt as students, the school has such an epic reputation in the design world. Daniel Burchard – who is now Art Director at cult Berlin sunglasses brand MYKITA – was one of the original founders and he came up with the name. We had these ironic tote bags made, and then press started picking up on it, including New York Times writer Ellis Rosso, and suddenly we were getting all this international attention.
But not all the attention was good? Wasn’t there a lawsuit about the name?
We got a letter from Bauhaus (a German DIY superstore) threatening us with a lawsuit if we didn’t change the name! We thought it was a joke at first; surely a megastore wasn’t threatened by a group of design students? But they had trademarked the name in the 1960s when the deeds were lost with the Nazi takeover. Even the official Bauhaus archive had had problems with the company over the rights of the name. So that’s where NEW TENDENCY came about, we had to rebrand in one week, and chose the name for its positive associations, it felt like a new, more grown-up beginning.
Has being based in Berlin influenced your agency?
Not directly, but it does is enable us to work. It’s dynamic and affordable, and we can rent a huge studio, which wouldn’t be possible in London or Munich. The creative scene is great too, and it’s easy for us to make new contacts and collaborate with them.
The bespoke marble tables NEW TENDENCY made for The Store X Soho House.
How does that happen?
Sometimes it’s through friends. For example, we met Alex Eagle through a pal, and ended up producing the marble tables in her shop in Soho House. Sometimes it’s just random. We bumped into the Danish designer Sigurd Larsen at the Nordic Embassy, and from that he commissioned us to create a boltless shelving system called “Click” in 2014. He was really easy to get along with, which is important. We also have a dedicated email for people who want to get in touch.
The META table
Do you have a signature piece?
Probably our Meta table. They are designed with the every day in mind: to hold your coffee table books, or rest your laptop on if you are sat on a sofa, but they come in a range of iconic colours like dusty pink or International Klein Blue. We don’t believe in trends, we want to make timeless objects you could hand down to your children.
What was the inspiration behind those?
We visited architect Luis Barragán House in Mexico City and that influenced the form and colours. We worked with photographer Maxime Guyon on our latest catalogue, and the images directly reference his buildings.
NEW TENDENCY DESIGNS
Find out more at www.newtendency.de