Guide to the West

Düsseldorf: Moritz Wenz

Moritz Wenz takes his products to a place where the sun never shines. Photoshoots of his leather products, such as belts and hard-wearing bags take place 1,500 meters below ground. A tribute to the mining industry. For Moritz Wenz, design is in part a product of down-to-earth craftsmanship from manufacturers and family-run businesses in North Rhine-Westphalia.
moritz-wenz.de

Bochum:  Jan Kath

Jan Kath's medium of choice is textiles when it comes to creating links between the US and Canada and Germany. His carpets have been awarded design prizes in many locations throughout the world, and combine simple industrial design with the warmth of colours and materials from the Orient. His carpets hang on white walls in his 1,000 square-meter showroom, which looks more like a gallery. Jan Kath shows us the inspired renaissance of the oriental carpet knotting technique.
jan-kath.de

Gelsenkirchen:  Natalie Waschk

An intense love of one’s homeland can also be found in Gelsenkirchen. The beautiful thing is that it does not descend into sentimentality. Like any parental home, “Gelsen” points to the bad things as well as the good. Natalie Waschk shares these and other perspectives with us in her “Hömma” blog or in the Insane Urban Cowboys association.
iuc-ge.de

Dortmund: Heimatdesigner

Reinhild Kuhn, Marc Röbbecke and Jan Kempinski switch on the spotlights and illuminate the design scene in and around Dortmund with full intensity. Their Heimatdesign (“homeland design”) magazine communicates their vibrant take on the creative industry.
heimatdesign.nrw

Essen: Volker K. Belghaus

Heimat: Heimatdesign (“Homeland: Homeland Design”). Editor-in-chief for four years, and today in print at K.West and online with the “Kulturkenner”. His credo when it comes to the “Ruhr area five million metropolis village” is that it doesn’t have to be beautiful.
kulturkenner.de

Duisburg: Mareike Engelke

The choice between working at home in her socks or looking out onto the cranes of the industrial port in her studio is not an easy one. So the woman with the picture book diploma, Mareike Engelke, decides not to make it and works here and there as she sees fit. We can admire her illustrations in various magazines and in her picture book “Vor den 7 Bergen” (“Before the 7 mountains”).
mareikeengelke.de

Oberhausen: Marcus Schütte

Marketing man and PR machinist for the real thing. He has known the Internationale Kurzfilmtage, the international short film festival, in Oberhausen since he was a child. He is also a committed supporter of K.West and the Rock and Pop Museum in Gronau. The editors of the Heimatdesign magazine regard Schütte, who was born in the Eisenheim district in Oberhausen, as being the personification of the structural changes in the Ruhr Area. And why not?
kulturwest.de

Bielefeld: Sascha Grewe

When carpenters take an interest in typography, the result is first-class furniture.  Building, studying interior design, and finally teaching sculptural design - that’s the potted biography of Sascha Grewe, who puts 120 percent into everything he does, and who runs the Art Can Break Your Heart company in Bielefeld. Bielefeld!
artcanbreakyourheart.de

Cologne: Sabine Voggenreiter

A matchmaker of the highest quality Since 1989, Sabine Voggenreiter has been bringing together Cologne designers, furniture houses, design galleries and colleges with international manufacturers and designers.  Her “Passagen” events, which take place in ports and under bridges, rather than in trade fair halls, are Germany’s biggest design event.
voggenreiter.com

Münster: Stephanie Stark

When graphic designers become registrars, they combine two supreme disciplines. In Stephanie Stark, architecture merges with graphic design, and the resulting marriage is manifest in the Agentur Stark company, as well as the Münster/Osnabrück version of the “stylus Magazin” published by Stephanie Stark.
stylus-ms-os.de

Wuppertal: Christian Hampe

A utopian of the first hour. What looks like the station in the Mirke district is in fact a lighthouse for creative and cultural projects in Wuppertal. The place is known as “Utopia city” - with no visa required.
clownfisch.eu