Ingo Maurer is an industrial designer from Germany who specializes in the design of lamps and light installations. He started buildins lighting systems and objects in the 60’s. Ingo Maurer company sells his products to all over the world. Him and his team work and grown everyday, as he says, also the group that works with him is composed by sixty people, more or less.

The company headquarters is in Schwabing, Munich. However, in 2005 we outgrew our production facilities in the courtyard at Kaiserstrasse 47 and a new location for production and shipping was established on the outskirts of Munich. In the former production hall, Ingo Maurer and his team created a spacious showroom, the second after New York, and the only one in Europe.

Their project department has steadily evolved from the design of exhibitions at trade fairs, festivities and special installations of the lighting system YaYaHo. Ingo Maurer takes on commissions for lighting as well as interior light-planning. In addition to the sale of our regular products, the projects are now an important part of their activities. The challenges they pose have often been invigorating and inspiring, both through the people involved and the spaces that are to be designed.The projects permit Ingo Maurer to realize his ideas for artistic installation or lighting objects, providing at the same time intriguing and pleasant spaces for those who will live or work in them.

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Biography

Ingo Maurer is the son of a fisherman and grew up on the island Reichenau in Lake of Constance with four siblings. After an apprenticeship as typesetter, he studied graphic design in Munich, Germany. 1960 Maurer left Germany for the USA, where he worked in New York and San Francisco as a freelance graphic designer. In 1963, he moved back to Germany, and founded Design M, a company developing and manufacturing lamps after his own designs. The company was later renamed to “Ingo Maurer GmbH”. One of his first designs, «Bulb» (1966) has been included in the design collection of the Museum of Modern Art in 1966.

1984 he presented the low-voltage wire system YaYaHo, consisting of two horizontally fixed metal ropes and a series of adjustable lighting elements with halogen bulbs, which became an instant success. Maurer was asked to create special YaYaHo installations for the exhibition “Lumieres je pense a vous” at Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Villa Medici in Rome, and the Institut Francais d’Architecture in Paris.

In 1989 Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain (Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art) in Jouy-en-Josas near Paris organized the exhibition “Ingo Maurer: Lumière Hasard Réflexion”. (Ingo Maurer: Light Chance Reflection). For this exhibition, for the first time Maurer created lighting objects and installation which were not meant for serial production.

Since 1989, his design and objects have been presented in a series of exhibitions, including the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam (1993). In 2002 the Vitra Design Museum organized Ingo Maurer – Light – Reaching for the Moon, a travelling exhibition with several shows in Europe and in Japan. In 2007 the Cooper Hewitt Museum|Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York presented the exhibition Provoking Magic: Lighting of Ingo Maurer.

Ingo Maurer created many objects using LEDs, the first being the lighting object Bellissima Brutta in 1996. In 2001 he presented a table lamp with LEDs with the name EL.E.Dee. Since 2006, he is also experimenting with organic light-emitting diode (Organic LEDs), presenting two objects in 2006, and a table lamp as limited edition.

Beside the design of lamps for serial production, Ingo Maurer creates and plans light installation for public or private spaces. In Munich, he created light installation at Westfriedhof subway station (1998) and the renovation and lighting concept for Muenchner Freiheit subway station, to be opened in December 2009. For Issey Miyake he realised an installation for a fashion show in Paris (1999). In 2006 he created lighting objects and installations for the interior of the Atomium the Brussels.

Among his best-known designs are the winged bulb Lucellino (1992), Porca Miseria! (1994),[1] a suspension lamp made with porcelain shards. Since the early 1980s, Maurer works with a team of younger designers and developers.

2011, the redesign for the underground area of the U-Bahn public transport station Marienplatz in Munich, Germany, was awarded to Ingo Maurer together with Allmann Sattler Wappner.

Ingo Maurer GmbH has two showrooms, in Munich and in New York.

Background and Realizations: Projects

Products

Table Lamps

Looksoflat
Stefan Geisbauer 2010

Max. Kugler
Ingo Maurer und Team 2001/2015

I Ricchi Poveri – Bzzzz
Ingo Maurer 2014

Oskar
Ingo Maurer 1998

I Ricchi Poveri – Toto
Ingo Maurer 2014

Hanging Lamps

Zettel’z 6
Ingo Maurer 1998

 

Light Structure

Peter Hamburger, Ingo Maurer 1970/2013

Knot 3

 

 

“Let me give you an idea of my personal fascination with New York. The city has always greeted me with open arms and let me feel the warmth of its heart. Where Europe has fences and walls – in the Sixties even more than today – New York is providing the world (and me) with the sense of liberty. Multiply this phenomenon by a million, and you get Manhattan. Whenever I go there, it liberates my mind. Whereas in Europe one is often confronted with doubts, New York has one clear message: All is possible!”
​Ingo Maurer, February 1999

Sources: wikipedia, ingo-maurer.com

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