interior, furniture and exhibition designer, born 1932, office in Ahrensburg

 

His photographs are familiar in Germany. The powerful and sometimes inspiring interiors he once composed for catalogue and adverts by Bofinger, Thonet or Duravit form part of the collective memory of the design-conscious public. Take, for instance, Philippe Starck's one-off bathtub from 1994. It might never have become an icon without Heide's photographic visualization in a rustic ambience. His carefully arranged compositions are sometimes said to be more important than his own furniture designs. But that would fail to recognize his impressive record as a furniture and lamp designer. He has designed products for renowned manufactures such as COR, DePadova, Wohnbedarf, WK Wohnen, Vorwerk and, more recently, Interlübke. Having trained in both cabinet-making and interior design, Heide began using his skills in magazine publishing. For the women’s title Brigitte he regularly composed and shot the “Brigitte-Zimmer” room, offering visions for home furnishing. He moved on to Schöner Wohnen, Germany's biggest-selling and, at the time, trend-setting domestic lifestyle magazine. Peter Maly and Siegfried Bensinger also worked in this role for the periodical. “In the sixties, if you couldn’t afford an Eames, as an aficionado of quality you might treat yourself to something from Rolf Heide”, wrote a design critic, describing Heide’s role with a note of irony. For there is no doubt that he has been one of the outstanding figures of the German design world. Just why the versatile Heide has been so regularly ignored in the literature is hard to understand. Perhaps it is because his profile just doesn’t fit the usual job description of a designer. His own pieces include a trolley table (as an alternative to the traditional tea trolley), a playhouse for children, folding chairs (for the home) and a wooden kitchen (for Habit). For Bulthaup he wrote and designed a book on the kitchen as a living space. “Far too much of what is designed is superfluous”, writes the man from northern Germany with a preference for minimalist solutions, reprimanding his fellow designers. Some of his creations are now considered classics, like the Stapelliege stacking lounger from the 1960s (now from MüllerMöbelwerkstätten), the variable Sofabank and the modularwall unit program called simply Container. Heide, whom colleagues sometimes regard as an “aesthetic pedant”, is rigorous in his pursuit of mobile, unconventional and
uncomplicated furniture for living. This is exemplified in his Containerküche from the early 1990s, which transfers the
principle of rolling bookcases from the library to the kitchen.