It started with a chair

Malte Grieb, who founded Ambivalenz, is not a trained designer but an economist. Perhaps that is exactly why he arrived at a question the furniture industry rarely asks: why does a chair get in the way when nobody is sitting on it?

The answer was a folding chair in birch plywood that folds down to two centimetres and then hangs on the wall – like a picture. Only: the fitting that makes this possible didn’t exist. So he developed it himself, together with designer Sebastian Feucht. A good year of tinkering, and the mechanism worked. The chair became Fläpps – and Fläpps became a whole system.

Fläpps – furniture that steps back

Today Fläpps is a wall-mounted furniture system for almost everything: desk, shelf, coat rack, kitchen table, vanity table, shoe rack. Every module is a piece of furniture in its own right, and they all combine freely. Folded open, full function; folded shut, a flat surface against the wall – and with the printed modules, a picture on it. The motifs come from selected graphic artists we work with.

And because instructions that double as a drilling template help more than any advertising promise: mounting is easier than you think.

Curt – the sofa that won’t commit

Curt arrived in 2020, designed together with German-Canadian designer Joa Herrenknecht. Curt is a modular sofa built from a single module shape – a pouf with a square base. The modules are joined by a strap system developed for the purpose: hook in, pull tight, done. And if tomorrow you would rather have a corner sofa than a three-seater – unhook, rearrange, done. No tools, no commitment, no connection made for eternity.

Considered, not decorated

One principle hasn’t changed since 2012: no product enters the collection just because it looks different. It needs a new function, a twist in modularity – or minimalism thought through to the end. The ideas rarely come from the drawing board and mostly from everyday life: the guitar shelf, for instance, came about because a new guitar had nowhere to go at home.

We like furniture that stays for a long time – even when everything around it changes. That is why Curt covers are removable, exchangeable and combinable, why you can reorder individual modules and parts instead of buying new, and why we are more likely to be filing away at a fitting than at a claim. Production takes place in the EU.

If you would like to see it all: our showroom at Eberswalder Straße 34, 10437 Berlin (Prenzlauer Berg) is open.

Curious? Discover Fläpps · Discover Curt · Configure your sofa · Contract furniture for hotels & offices