One idea pervades Habit’s entire product range: combining simple forms with maximum utility. There is no secret about the origins of this concept. The company's founder, Ulrich Lodholz, was formerly with Bofinger, the furniture-makers who became a leading force in the post-war modernist trend in West Germany. So it is hardly surprising to find that – alongside products developed in-house, like the explorable Living Landscape (by Tata Ronkholz-Tölle) – nearly all the Bofinger classics found their way, at some time, into the Habit program after the former avant-garde manufacturer collapsed in the economic crisis of the 1970s. Many Habit pieces were designed by the ingenious Hans Gugelot, including the archetypal system wall unit M 125 (no longer in production), the back-tobasics bed GB 1085, and the self-assembled easychair GS 1076 (k p.451) with its springy backrest, which is a prime example of intelligent constructivism. Although Habit’s attempt at a reedition of Helmut Bätzner’s Bofinger Chair was almost as exciting as its premiere, in the end it had to be aborted due to technical problems. Habit has also produced new versions of furniture from the American Shaker sect, regarded as pioneers of modern minimalism. These items include the comfortable, meticulously reconstructed rocking-chair F 151. Focusing on design and marketing, the company from the Bergisches Land region has its products manufactured externally. A number of current designs are in metal, including the garden furniture Skwer (by Alfons Bippus and Otto Sudrow), which integrates industrial grids and is totally weatherproof, an office container program, and an aluminium table (by Arnold Bauer) whose extremely pared-down form makes it an all-rounder in its applications. A genuine innovation is the quick-change artist plug.table (2005 by Matthias Demacker). The tubular steel legs of this dining-cum-work table can be turned 90 degrees and reinserted into the tabletop to turn it into a low coffee table on U-shaped runners. Reduced to three components, the table can be assembled without any tools. Here the spirit of minimalism,
represented by Bofinger and Gugelot, has been unswervingly translated into a product for today.