His studio – awarded “Design Team of the Year” in 1991 – has been one of the most successful for more than 30 years. All the same, Reiner Moll is not a star designer who regularly pops up in the media: his qualities are of quite a different nature. The Swabian adopted his analytical approach from his teacher Karl Dittert, whose roots go back to the Bauhaus.

Moll believes, to put his professional concept in a nutshell, that “design is never an end in itself”. Every single time, you have to redefine the purpose. That’s why communication is so important, not only amongst the 12 studio employees, but also with the manufacturer. A network of informers supports this process. And in the end, that’s how products like the three-legged table Stand up (2004 for Hiller) emerge, a table that, when folded using a proprietary mechanism, is extremely narrow.