Susi und Ueli Berger

Susi und Ueli Berger

Essay
Artist and de­signer duo, Susi and Ueli Berger, have been awarded the Swiss Grand Award for De­sign 2010 for their life work. In­spired by the wish to im­ple­ment their un­usual ideas, they cre­ated ex­tremely in­ven­tive and yet al­ways func­tional fur­ni­ture, which has gone down in the his­tory of Swiss de­sign. With irony, imag­i­na­tion and a con­sid­er­able flair for ma­te­ri­als and forms, they de­signed ob­jects like the Soft Chair, the Wolken­lampe and the Schubladen­stapel, stacked draw­ers with a rose­wood ve­neer. These de­sign clas­sics are still in pro­duc­tion today while the orig­i­nals are in great de­mand among cognoscenti. Susi and Ueli Berger worked to­gether for al­most four decades in many areas of de­sign and art, en­gag­ing in a fruit­ful and in­tense ex­change of ideas both as a cou­ple and on in­di­vid­ual pro­jects. Ueli Berger passed away in 2008. Susi Berger will ac­cept the prize of the Fed­eral Of­fice of Cul­ture in the name of her hus­band as well.