“The product range encompasses waiting-room furniture for the lobbies of administration buildings, chairs and tables for seminar and conference rooms, swivelling office chairs, furnishings for cafeterias and canteens, auditorium seating as well as furniture for senior citizens’ homes and hospitals.” The fields of activity defined here sound precise and business-like, but, although quite wide-ranging, hardly inspire one to expect exciting design solutions. As insiders are well aware, however, the company based on the French border in the Baden region has repeatedly managed in the last few years to draw attention to itself with trade fair highlights. A medium-sized operation managed by its founders Helena and Rolf Brunner, around average size for the industry with its 300 or so employees, Brunner has departed further and further from the grey zone of ordinary everyday mass goods. This is only fitting in its Black Forest setting, Germany’s paradise for tinkerers and technicians, which is also home to such diverse furniture designers as Draenert and Rolf Benz. In order to convey its corporate philosophy even more effectively, the firm recently erected a new, architecturally ambitious communications centre. The declared aim is to conceive innovations “that make people’s lives more pleasant”: a plausible, almost banal credo that is more demanding than it sounds. It might have been voiced by Wolfgang C. R. Mezger, the designer who played a decisive part in the new course Brunner has embarked upon, and who is strongly represented in the company’s current collection, from the Spira.sit cantilevered chair to the modular and extremely adaptable waiting room seating program Take. Despite the existence of an internal development team that regularly contributes products to the range, such as the plywood chair series Birdie, Eagle and Fox, close collaboration with external designers has also become a key business principle. Other notable idea suppliers working for B runner are Matteo Thun with his office system MT.02 and Martin Ballendat with various chairs, for example Clear, a minimalist design in natural wood that is quite atypical for both maker and brand. Amongst the many innovations in recent years were surprises such as the graceful chair Milanolight by Mezger and a table that can be folded out at a touch, Sleight by Lepper Schmidt Sommerlade, a team that likewise goes wayback at Brunner.