Ingo Maurer

Ingo Maurer (°Reichenau, May 12, 1932) is a German industrial designer who specialises in the design of lamps and light installations with two showrooms, in Munich and in New York.

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.

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.

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.