»Furniture fashioner« is what Jan Armgardt calls himself. And furniture stood at the beginning of his professional career: Armgardt, born in 1947, was apprentice to a furniture builder. After this training he studied interior decoration before returning to the practical side of furnishing, working for upholsterers, welders and joiners. With this solid craftsman´s basis Armgardt founded in 1971, together with a partner, »Workshop Design« and then »Armgardt´s Folding Furniture«, both of them companies which designed and marketed component furniture. Since 1974 Armgardt has been a self- employed designer. Besides his interior designs, his experimental activity has also found recognition. Naturally, here too furniture plays a central part, as with the paper furniture for »Human Touch« or the interior for the world´s most famous doll: it was Armgardt who created »Barbie´s New Livingroom« for the project »Artists and Designers Form Barbie«. He has been guest professor at Aachen technical college since 1998.
[source: www.wittmann.at]
