Dirk Winkel | ScandinavianDesign.com

Dirk Winkel is a Berlin-based product designer specialising in lighting and furniture. He is best known for his long collaboration with the Swedish lighting company Wästberg, where he has designed more products than any other collaborator, from the w127 Winkel task light to the Alto family.

Background

Winkel studied at the University of the Arts (UdK) in Berlin and took an MA in Design Products at the Royal College of Art in London in 2010. After working for designers in Berlin and London, he set up his own design office in Berlin in the summer of 2011. Since 2012 he has taught Design Construction on the industrial design course at the UdK, and in 2022 he became guest professor of product design at HBKsaar in Saarbrücken.

Design approach

Formal purism is his starting point, which he sees as a basic principle of sustainability. He is interested in pushing the limits of industrial mass production, rethinking how light and lighting work, and exploring the potential of new materials. His lamps are often reduced to a few strict geometric volumes, with advanced optics hidden inside.

Lighting for Wästberg

The w127 Winkel task light became Wästberg’s bestseller. For its tenth anniversary it was re-engineered in aluminium as the w227 Winkel alu, using significantly less material. The w164 Alto floor lamp, two cylinders in an off-centre, brutalist composition, won Best Product at the Editors’ Choice awards at the Stockholm Furniture & Light Fair in 2016. The family has since grown with the w224 Alto pendant and the Alto Wall.

The w181 Linier packs 256 individual optical systems into a slim linear body. It was followed by the high-efficiency w181 Linier Pro. The w225 Ion brings full-spectrum LED light to a precisely engineered lamp. Several of his designs are part of Wästberg’s Raw collection in untreated aluminium, alongside lamps by David Chipperfield and Claesson Koivisto Rune.

Recognition

His work has been shown at Art Basel Miami, the VitraHaus and the Design Museum in London, and featured in Frame, Monocle, Surface and the Frankfurter Allgemeine. Awards and nominations include GOOD DESIGN from the Chicago Athenaeum, the Swedish Design Award, Designs of the Year at the Design Museum, a German Design Award special mention and the Editors’ Choice Award in Stockholm.