Stuttgart designers Markus Jehs (left, born 1965) and Jürgen Laub (right, born 1964) have set a steady course for success. Whilst their day-to-day work consists of designs for such renowned brands as Cassina, Cor, Fritz Hansen, Nemo, Thonet or Ycami, flamboyant special projects like “room 606 – ice cracks” at the Ice Hotel in northern Sweden indicate the freshness of their approach and testify to the pleasure they find in pure design that does not pursue a concrete aim. Even so, their classic product and interior design projects are anything but boring.
Jehs + Laub combine “German” virtues like functionality, formal stringency and clarity with extraordinary imagination in terms of their concepts and use of materials. Their solutions seem strikingly simple, a combination of aesthetics and logic that reveals itself at first glance. That may well be because they always start from a strong basic idea, as they say. “Ideally, a product will then develop all by itself.” Sounds simple. Just like their concept for the new Mercedes Benz showroom that has been implemented worldwide: the rectangle, compasses and triangle or set square stand for product stage, communication and space segmentation.
The space chair for Fritz Hansen already looks like a classic and uses different covers to show a variety of faces – sometimes business-like, sometimes trendy.