by Anna Lazzaron
Stainless steel is one of design’s most stern and rational materials, yet German design duo Haus Otto has found a way to make it lively and playful in its lamp for Nils Holger Moormann.
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In September 2025, Stuttgart-based design studio Haus Otto, founded by Patrick Henry Nagel and Nils Körner, exhibited at Maison&Objet Paris as one of the winners of the prestigious Rising Talent Award. Each year, the award spotlights emerging designers from a different country, exploring both their cultural heritage and new avant-gardes. For this edition, the jury turned its attention to Germany, observing the contemporary evolution of its Bauhaus and Werkbund roots.
Haus Otto’s latest product is the La Dré lamp, a quirky product made entirely of stainless steel, designed for Nils Holger Moormann. The product features a circular lampshade that sits directly on the bulb, connecting to a movable ball joint that allows infinite adjustment. By rotating, tilting, or pivoting, users can sculpt their environment with La Dré’s light. With only a few components, the lamp can transform the entire mood of a room in seconds, thanks to its curious and adaptable design.
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The frame consists of laser-cut stainless steel parts that snap together without the use of any tools or screws. The cable, socket, and structure fit together transparently; nothing is hidden, following the High Tech design movement’s principles from the 1970s, which pushed for structures to be visibly expressed in architecture, for clarity of thought. This kind of approach also allows more durability and easier reparability, as the structure is so intuitive.
The lamp’s ethos aligns perfectly with the design principles of Nils Holger Moormann, the product’s client and manufacturer. The company focuses on products that feature what they describe as a “special idea“, something “brilliant” that can be a detail or the product’s whole design. Their pieces are always slightly humorous and always exciting, never boring. In this way, La Dré fits impeccably in their catalogue, with its versatile and interesting character.
The brand’s production is entirely local, based in the mountainous town of Aschau in Germany. Producing locally is not just a sustainable choice, but it also allows the company and the designers to meticulously follow every step of the creation of their object, from rough shapes to final touches. Moormann also speaks about the benefits of speaking the same language as their production specialists and being able to choose the right hands for the job, allowing better communication and flexibility during the manufacturing process.
Haus Otto has described its approach as “human-made design”, focusing on human sensibilities while shifting perceptions towards materiality, shapes, and alternative ways of production. Similarly to Nils Holger Moormann, the studio embodies humour in many of its works, like the Pixel Chair, a conceptual object which features a green screen on top of a rigid stainless steel chair. This humour manifests in La Dré more subtly and elegantly in its joint, an anthropomorphic quality that could remind us of Pixar’s iconic lamp, as if it might swivel to look at us in any moment.
La Dré stands as a perfect synthesis of Haus Otto and Nils Holger Moormann‘s design ethos, as well as embodying a new generation of design, as the winners of the Rising Talent Award at Maison&Objet. Its technical clarity and material honesty reflect a deep engagement with the craft, while its playful nature and versatility bring warmth to the rationality of steel. La Dré illuminates a way forward for contemporary design: conscious, transparent, but more importantly, human.