German and Swiss design today

Light art, design museums, Freitag's reused bags and a new generation of industrial designers.

Hartmut Esslinger's frog design shaped Apple's computers in the 1980s, and Ingo Maurer made lamps that played with light and light bulbs. The Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein opened in 1989.

In Zurich the Freitag brothers began sewing bags from old lorry tarpaulins in 1993. Konstantin Grcic has made chairs such as Chair One of 2004, formed of cast aluminium in a network of planes.