Berlin has plenty of design. What it seemed to be missing was a moment when all of it could appear in the same frame.
That is what made the first edition of CURRENTS Berlin, held from 10 to 12 September, interesting before anyone had even seen how it would turn out. The programme unfolded across the city, bringing very different parts of the design scene onto the same map and giving Berlin something it had been talking about for a while: a design event of its own.
To understand what actually stayed with people once the doors opened, we turned to Daniel Heilig.
Born in Budapest and raised in Germany, Daniel is a photographer, designer and the founder of Heilig Objects. His work has a very particular sensitivity to objects and how they are seen, which made him exactly the kind of person we wanted walking through a first edition like this.
He did so with the new Sigma BF in hand, the remarkably pared-back full-frame camera launched by Sigma in 2025. Over the three days, Daniel photographed whatever made him stop.
We asked him to send us those images and tell us why.
The result moves from a university laboratory to a weaving studio, from Egon Eiermann to young practices we had never encountered before. There is no attempt to make the selection coherent for the sake of it. That is precisely what makes it useful.
This is not quite a “best of CURRENTS”. It is CURRENTS as Daniel saw it.
See:tech — Before the Finished Object
Photos by Daniel Heilig, shot on Sigma BF.
Presented by the Weißensee Academy of Art Berlin, See:tech brought the work of three technical labs into public view: Rapid Prototyping, Soft Rapid Prototyping and eLAB. These are the spaces where experiments often begin before developing into products, research or independent projects outside the academy. Daniel’s selection starts here, with design still being tested and questioned rather than presented as a finished answer, and with education treated as an active part of the wider design scene.
Weberei — Keeping the Loom Busy
Photos by Daniel Heilig, shot on Sigma BF.
Founded by Noël Saavedra, Weberei is a Berlin weaving studio producing tapestries, blankets, cushions and unique textile works while also giving other creatives access to its machinery and expertise. Saavedra actively encourages collaboration, making the studio as much a place for others to experiment as a production space of his own. It offers a very practical approach to preserving craft: keeping specialist knowledge useful by allowing new people to work with it.
Richard Lampert — Eiermann, Still in Use
Photos by Daniel Heilig, shot on Sigma BF.
For CURRENTS, Richard Lampert presented an extension to its collection of furniture by Egon Eiermann, a particularly German reference in Daniel’s selection. Founded in Stuttgart in 1993, the company combines rediscovered design classics with contemporary work, choosing pieces for the strength of the individual idea rather than a uniform house style. Eiermann’s furniture appears here as something still intended for everyday use, rather than design history kept at a respectful distance.
Obscure Objects — Finding the Unexpected
Photos by Daniel Heilig, shot on Sigma BF.
Founded in 2023 by Luisa Pöpsel and Moritz Pitrowski, Obscure Objects is a young collaborative practice interested in materiality, light perception and form. Their work looks for less conventional ways of creating objects and environments, with an emphasis on the unexpected rather than an immediately recognisable style. Among Daniel’s selections, Obscure represents the younger end of CURRENTS: a practice still free to experiment with how an object should look, behave and be experienced.
Moonarij — The Vessel Reconsidered
Photos by Daniel Heilig, shot on Sigma BF.
Moonarij, founded by Johanna von Wichelhaus in Berlin in 2022, works with small regional studios to produce handcrafted glass vessels while supporting the local knowledge behind their making. The collections are conceived as a personal tribute to the cultural and artistic history of the vessel, one of design’s oldest forms. Rather than abandoning that familiarity, Moonarij uses it as a starting point, allowing material, proportion and the hand of the glassmaker to become the distinguishing elements.
Maj van der Linden × Hanna Fastrich
Photos by Daniel Heilig, shot on Sigma BF.
Berlin gallery Maj van der Linden works at the meeting point of fine and applied arts, presenting collectible design and handcrafted objects by contemporary designers, artists and manufacturers. Its presentation with Hanna Fastrich reflects that position, where function, craftsmanship and collecting comfortably overlap. The gallery itself extends this approach beyond exhibitions, acting as a space for conversations, launches and interior projects, and giving the objects a context closer to the environments in which they might eventually live.
Essentials by Freifrau at the Feuerle Collection
Photos by Daniel Heilig, shot on Sigma BF.
Founded by Marc and Niklas Helweg and creatively shaped by art director Hanne Willmann, Essentials by Freifrau produces lighting, glassware, vases, trays and domestic objects in small series across European manufactories and specialist workshops. Variations in material and visible traces of production are deliberately retained, giving each piece an individual character. Presented at the Feuerle Collection, the objects entered a particularly atmospheric setting, connecting a new brand with ideas of craftsmanship, provenance and objects intended to remain in use over time.
Also in Daniel’s Camera Roll
LLOT LLOV
Beyond presenting its own work, llot llov shaped the wider exhibition at Jalousiefabrik, bringing several designers together inside one of CURRENTS’ most characterful locations.
BOLON
Bolon turns flooring into something much more visual, using texture, pattern and surface to change the character of a room from the ground up.
WÄSTBERG × LOEHR × KOLORS
Three different practices meet in one installation, allowing lighting, furniture and colour to shape the space together rather than behaving as separate elements.
AOIRO
Aoiro introduces scent as another material in the design conversation. Less visible than an object, but capable of changing how a space is remembered.
SOHO HOME
Soho Home brings the relaxed, layered interiors of its Houses into a more domestic scale, with furniture, lighting and objects designed to feel collected.
After going through Daniel’s photographs, we wanted to know one thing: did Berlin actually need CURRENTS?
His answer was immediate.
“Everyone, especially in Berlin, kept talking about the need for a design event that gives everyone a chance to present their work, yet no one really had the guts to make it happen. Jasmin and Laura actually made it happen.”
What he described afterwards was interesting because it did not sound like someone ignoring the difficult moment the German furniture industry is going through. He is very aware of it. Yet spending three days around CURRENTS left him with a much more energetic picture of the people working inside that industry.
Schools were showing experiments, young studios were finding an audience, galleries were bringing people together and established companies were still willing to participate in something new.
Daniel also liked that the first edition did not feel as though it was trying too hard to prove itself.
“It felt playful and effortless, yet serious and credible enough to create a strong foundation for a second edition on a much larger scale.”
CURRENTS now has a first edition behind it, a city that seems ready to keep the conversation going, and plenty of room to become something we probably cannot quite picture yet.
We’ll see what Berlin has in store for us next year.
Cover picture: Daniel Heilig with the Sigma BF. Photo by Kateryna Myronenko.
