Hannes & Fritz

Background

Hannes & Fritz is a design studio founded in 2019 by Johannes Breuer and Fritz Gräber, a German-Swiss duo who met during their Master studies at ECAL in Lausanne, Switzerland. Their collaboration began with friendship and a love of cooking, and then grew out of a spontaneous design project: the hurried construction of an extra bench for a friend's dinner party. The duo works across cities, which gives ideas time and space to mature.

Signature Style

Hannes & Fritz develop each project through a back-and-forth process of iteration and evolution. A project typically starts from an existing archetypal form, which the duo updates for a contemporary setting through restrained but deliberate design interventions. Their work is built around a deep respect for material and production techniques, to create objects with an innate longevity through both physical and visual attributes. Collective time is spent hands-on with the material of each project, producing 1:1 prototypes that reveal new design solutions. Fritz favours a more dynamic, expressive design language, whilst Hannes takes a more linear approach.

Notable Works

• Bench Two (2018): a bench for two made from one standard 3 m raw piece of pinewood, using all the wood without waste and without screws; a limited edition of 16 was produced in Switzerland, and it developed into the Weekday collection for HAY
• INN Chair (2019) for Girsberger: an everyday chair that uses asymmetry, with a symmetrical, stackable version available since 2022
• PACO Chair (2021): a stackable dining chair in aluminium tubes and CNC-milled solid oak, commissioned for a private client
• FLEX Chair (2021): a handmade 1:1 prototype that developed into the May collection for New Works
• Weekday (2023) for HAY: outdoor benches, tables and cushions in solid pine, with limited-edition END. x HAY Weekday Bench colours launched during Salone del Mobile 2023
• May (2023) for New Works, extended in 2025 with a bench and bistro tables
• Hongkong (2024) for Vero: a stainless steel collection of stool, chair, bench and tables, made in Italy
• HAUS Toolbox (2025) for Normann Copenhagen: a powder coated steel storage piece with a wooden handle

Legacy

The PACO Chair was a nominee of the Pure Talents Contest for imm cologne 2021. In June 2026 the studio initiated and curated Seeking Sails, an exhibition at the Embassy of Switzerland in Denmark during 3daysofdesign in Copenhagen, for which 12 designers, six from Switzerland and six from Denmark, designed objects from reclaimed sailcloth. The studio also created Galerie Geberit for the same venue and event.