Legally, WK Wohnen is an association; practically speaking, it is the oldest manufacturer of German designer furniture. The membership roster lists approximately 130 furniture stores, which exclusively carry the WK furnishings line. They are in contact with some 50 manufacturers and a similar number of designers. The association has working for it the crème de la crème of the German furniture design scene, including Thomas Althaus, Jan Armgard t, Siegfried Bensinger (who functioned as art director for a time), Egon Eiermann, Rolf Heide, Stefan Heiliger, Peter Maly, Wolfgang C. R. Mezger, Anita Schmidt, Burkhard Vogtherr and Herta-Maria Witzemann, just to name a few. The enlightened idea of “the art of the home” – later called “lifestyle culture” – developed shortly before the First World War, when the Deutscher Werkbund was working to reform the domestic environment. A group of German furniture stores united in order to manufacture high-quality series furniture emulating the precedent set by the Deutsche Werkstätten. In the beginning, the exclusive manufacturer was the Behr company. The association’s statutes proclaim its commitment to “spreading good taste”, following the precepts of the Deutscher Werkbund. In the post-Bauhaus period, flexible extendable furniture systems were added to the program, which could be combined into an “Aufbauheim” (“Assembled Home”, by Paul Griesser). Thus WK Wohnen became an early agency for modular furniture systems, an ongoing theme in German furniture design which was carried forward by designers including Georg Satink (1952, WK-Satink) and Peter Maly (1987, Muro). While the reaction to lean times after the Second World War was the development of simple furniture under the label WK-Sozialwerk, the company soon thereafter participated in the neo-modern trend sweeping through West Germany with functional designs that were successfully presented in 1958 at the Brussels World Fair and elsewhere. Later on came the rocking chair Nonna (1973, by Paul Tuttle), a hybrid made of bentwood and metal. The stretchable WK 698 Spot easychair (1989, by Stefan Heiliger) is regarded as an incunabula of the form-happy postmodern era. Milestones of more recent vintage include the WK 600 sofa (by Thomas Althaus), the clever pullout table 814 (by Dietmar Joester) and the rocking lounge chair Balance (by Stefan Heiliger). All the same, the label has seldom stood out with conspicuous avantgardism. One of the advantages of WK-Wohnen, more important than ever these days, is the co-ordinated offer of a complete line of furnishings exuding a well-tempered functionalism.