Birgit Gämmerler is the founder and CEO of the company Zeitraum. She was inspired to found the company as a young industrial designer who was simply tired of making things in plastic. “All the consumer stuff I did was plastic-based, and I was so bored with it,” she says. “I wanted a new challenge. But there weren’t many alternatives 25 years ago. So I teamed up with another designer, Rolf Huber, and we began offering oiled wooden pieces, and that was it – something really new for the market then.”

In design terms, Zeitraum’s success has always relied on what Gämmerler calls “double happiness”: the union of ecologically acceptable materials and techniques with beauty, simplicity and sensuous tactility. She notes, “We wanted to achieve a similarly clean and functional aesthetic with good proportions and a coherent structure. It was important to us that our pieces should be beautiful, functional, and able to last a lifetime. Our furniture should be repairable, and it should get more beautiful as it ages. Wood has that quality – it acquires a patina.”

Gämmerler notes, “As a woman, I find it important to observe and study society and find answers to modern needs. What makes sense in our world? It’s a significant question. As designers, we should develop only products that make sense.”

AVENUE ROAD carries a curated assortment of Birgit Gämmerler pieces.