Dirk Winkel is a Berlin based product designer specialising in lighting and furniture design. He studied at the University of Arts in Berlin, before completing a MA in Design Products at the Royal College of Arts in London. This all led to him moving back to Berlin and setting up his own design studio in 2011.
His work is driven by his belief in the beauty of formal purism. Winkel also shows a clear interest in stretching the boundaries of common mass production processes. Some of Dirk Winkel’s key explorations have been the rethinking of light and lighting paradigms, as well as the investigation of new materials and their potential. He has utilised designs to show that plastic can be as solid and tactile as metal or wood.
“One of the greatest things I was missing in typical designs made of plastic was a significant impression of substance, of materiality, therefore the next step could only be a design that celebrated the actual material as it is, straightforward, solid and honest." – Dirk Winkel, talking on the w127 Desk Lamp designed for Wasterburg