There is something typically Swiss about Steiger: he feels called to explore the world when the small home country fails to offer everything the big heart desires. As a child he wanted to be a circus electrician – already back then wishing to combine solid craftsmanship with the big, wide world.
He became a cabinetmaker, worked as a draughtsman and attended the Higher School of Design in Basel, focusing on furniture and interior design. Always with the aim in mind to consciously shape the objects in our living environment, to fashion materials into functions and to express within this transformation the poetry of the matter - and thus to find obvious solutions. Beauty in function.
A creative yearning prompted Steiger to move to Scandinavia. He stayed four years and graduated as a furniture designer and interior designer at the Danish Design School in Copenhagen. “The Northern Lights”, an award-winning competition project for a snow sculpture in Nuuk, Greenland, was created in this period. Steiger built it on the spot with two co-students. A sculptural, intuitive gesture - an impromptu idea, formed off the reel. Beauty in emotion.
In 2001, after his learning and development phase, Hanspeter Steiger founded his design studio in Zürich. Parallel to the building up of his own work place, he worked several years as a freelance project manager for the Swiss interior designers Pia Schmid and Iria Degen.
In 2003 he already made a breakthrough as a designer with the chair TORSIO for the Roethlisberger Collection. A chair made from a warped three-dimensional pattern.
In 2005 followed the next peak in his design work: the lamp Lampetia ClassiCon, which is impressively modern and classic at the same time.
In 2008 Hanspeter Steiger decided to concentrate entirely on his own work. Upon completion of the Book harp - a unique piece for a private client in 2009 - begins the aggregation of further developments from the design studio Hanspeter Steiger. In 2010 a LED light series, and a gaming device will succeed.
Esther-Mirjam de Boer, Certified. Arch ETH / sia / sda
