Nils Holger Moormann

13 February 2015

Nils Holger Moormann has redefined German furniture design: independent, unconventional, and always with a playful sense for how ideas and function come together. Through his company, he created space for a new, offbeat design culture to thrive. For his lasting impact on German design and his multi-faceted legacy, the jury of the German Design Awards 2015 recognises him as Personality of the Year.

“This passion between design, chaos and games can combine to create an essence that is so strong that it speaks its very own, clear language. I have fun with that, that's what I like.” Nils Holger Moormann

“Basically, it was Nils Holger Moormann who, with his design company of the same name, created the biotope in which a lively, independent traditional line of furniture design was able to develop in Germany out of the rebellion against the sluggish, functionalist design modernism of the 1980s. With a firm hand, Moormann steered his company through the turbulent furniture boom of the past decades and into undreamt-of spheres of success, while also becoming involved in local politics in his adopted home of Aschau in Chiemgau, where he developed a new type of design lodge, the ‘berge’. Such a multifaceted life's work is now being honoured with the German Design Awards 2015 in the Personality category.”

Andrej Kupetz, CEO German Design Council (2015)