After several years working in the car industry, trained toolmaker Ilja Huber (born 1983) became a mature student, taking a degree at Hamburg’s University of Fine Arts (HFBK) specialising in product design and experimental design. After graduation, in 2019, he set up his own studio and won first place in the Pure Talents Contest at that year’s imm cologne; in 2020, he was given a ‘Best of’ label in the Design Plus Award at Light + Building in Frankfurt.

In his work, Huber (now based in Berlin), shows his lasting passion for experimenting with industrial and handcraft processes, always with the overarching aim of finding the best solution for functionality and user-friendliness in each individual product. His approach is to design things which are simple, easy to understand, yet have something of a twist, an unexpectedly radical element in store – an approach recognisable in the 2023 modular Mia sofa collection he has produced for Freifrau.