With the passing of Klaus Nienkämper, the founder of the eponymous Toronto-based manufacturer, the global design community has lost a legend. A champion of contemporary furniture for over six decades, Nienkämper brought on international talents to collaborate on pieces that went on to become icons. And he embraced Canadians at the height of their careers and just emerging, often introducing their ingenuity to the world stage. Just as important, Klaus Nienkämper was known for his kindness, charisma and warmth – and his great storytelling, enhanced by his dry wit and aged-in-oak baritone. He died on October 28 at the age of 84.
If Klaus Nienkämper’s story is synonymous with the trajectory of modern Canadian design, it is also emblematic of the immigrant dream. In 1960, he left his home in the industrial German city of Duisburg to embark on a freighter headed to Canada. As he recounted to PBS’s Bob Scully, “The motor gave up off the coast of Scotland,” but the 20-year-old Nienkämper, one of only 12 passengers on board, wasn’t worried. He had nothing to lose with only $36 in his pocket and all the time in the world.
He also had big dreams. In Germany, he had already worked at Knoll International’s agency in Düsseldorf (followed by a stint in Finland with the brand Asko and then with designer Tapio Wirkkala). Demonstrating a natural aptitude for modern design, he’d joined the company as an apprentice in tandem with his studies, rather than take up his family’s antiques business; he would graduate as a trained merchant with an interior and textile design background. “Contemporary furniture was always where my heart was,” he told Scully.
Safely landed in Canada, he settled in Toronto. After a period of working blue collar jobs, including as the “rear-right vacuum cleaner” at Farb’s Executive Car Wash at King and John while living in a six-dollar room in Roncesvalles, Nienkämper made his way into the nascent Toronto design scene. He pitched himself to various design and manufacturing brands, including J.J. Brook, a Herman Miller dealer that also produced its own furniture for commercial projects. John Brook introduced the ambitious young upstart to Gary Sonneberg, with whom Brook ran Precision Craft Industries.
This was the beginning of everything. Klaus Nienkämper seized on new and exciting relationships. Most momentous was the friendship he struck up with David Bain, who worked at J.J. Brook. Soon he and Bain would set up Swiss Design of Canada to manufacture modern Swiss furniture under license. This business model would prevail in the early days: an established company would entrust SDC to produce their designs for local projects, and the duo would co-ordinate their manufacture with various shops across the city. When Bain dropped out of the business, Klaus and his wife – Beatrix, whom he met on a return trip to Germany – started anew, renaming their company Nienkämper.
In the 1960s, the city and the country were changing and seemed be open to the possibilities of modern design. The Massey Commission had laid new groundwork for official support of the arts and culture; and major architectural works, like Toronto’s new City Hall by Viljo Revell, were pointing ostentatiously toward a new era. It was also around this time that Nienkämper won his first government contracts to furnish new or expanded airports in Toronto, Winnipeg, Calgary and Edmonton. Another commission of high calibre followed with Mies van der Rohe’s TD Centre – “a big shot in the arm” for Nienkämper, who was granted the license to manufacture furniture for the towers by Knoll, his old employer.
Expo 67 was the height of this optimistic era – for the nation and the fledgling company, both. Nienkämper received his most exciting commission yet: to build a bed for Charles de Gaulle in the Commissioner General’s Suite at Habitat 67, Moshe Safdie’s just-completed vision of futuristic living. Only 27 years old, Nienkämper took to the assignment eagerly and ended up furnishing the entire apartment – but de Gaulle never stayed there. Before he could even kick up his feet on the bespoke bed (built extra large for the six-foot-five French President), he was asked to leave the country after shouting “Vive le Québec Libre!” from the balcony of Montreal City Hall.
(One of the best anecdotes about this appears in Nienkämper’s 50th anniversary monograph. “At a cocktail party many years later, Klaus would encounter architect Moshe Safdie. ‘I said my first introduction to his work as at Habitat, where I had furnished the Commissioner General’s Suite, and he said, I still own that Suite. De Gaulle slept there, you know that? And I said no, he didn’t. We made the bed, and I was so disappointed he didn’t get to sleep there because the government told him to move on. Safdie said…, Oh my God, for 40 years I’ve been telling people de Gaulle slept there.'”)
In 1968, Klaus and Beatrix bought the 1845 building on King and Berkeley to establish a storefront – “We have to show this furniture so that people understand” – in a downtrodden part of town that could hardly glimpse its evolution into a chic design district. On opening night, the first person to walk through the doors was Jane Jacobs. Arthur Erickson, Ron Thom, Mario Bellini and Peter Haussmann would also attend – the era’s local and international design glitterati gathered under one roof.
No matter how charismatic the Nienkämpers were, running a design company in Toronto was still precarious. At the beginning, they kept business afloat by renting out the upper levels and having a speakeasy on the 2nd floor. But the dawn of the next decade would usher in financial stability: Having established its expertise in producing high-quality, modern furniture, Nienkämper became the go-to for public commissions; in 1976, the Canadian government and Arthur Erickson brought on Nienkämper to build the furniture (again, licensed by Knoll) for Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s office.
By 1978, it became clear that running a furniture business by assembling parts made in small shops all over the city wasn’t cutting it anymore. The brand built a factory in Scarborough, and continued to license pieces by vaunted European brands, including de Sede, with which it partnered on the sinuous Nonstop Sofa for a Fort McMurray, Alberta, hospital. Arthur Erickson also continued to collaborate with Nienkämper on prominent projects, including Toronto’s venerated Roy Thomson Hall and the Embassy of Canada in Washington D.C.
“Dealing with the government officials and dealing with Arthur was like walking through a minefield,” Klaus Nienkämper would later recall to Azure. For Erickson’s “some parts Modern, some parts Classical” Embassy building, which opened in 1989, the architect and his partner, Francisco Kripasz, envisioned everything down to the modern furnishings, including the elegant red Chancery Dining Chair with its polished-chrome cantilevered base. “We just had sketches to work with, and there was huge pressure in terms of deadlines, so the luxury of experimenting wasn’t there. I think the embassy is still a very impressive installation.”
By the 1980s — and spurred by Thomas Lamb’s provocation, “When are you going to do something for Canadian designers?” — Nienkämper had begun to commission original pieces by homegrown talents. (He also launched a student lounge chair competition in 1989 — unheard of at the time.) These would become the brand’s most singular designs, and the company introduced many great works over the decades that followed.
They include Brigitte Shim and Howard Sutcliffe’s HAB, a riff on the Muskoka chair that architecture critic Lisa Rochon once described as “a moose of a chair given the grace of a blue heron“; and Daniel Libeskind’s Spirit House, a functional artwork sculpted from 14 gauge stainless steel and inspired by the Polish-Canadian architect’s still-controversial ROM addition. Yabu Pushelberg, John and Patricia Patkau, Tom Deacon and Karim Rashid have also collaborated with the brand on enduring and ever-evolving pieces. All had a place in Klaus Nienkämper’s heart – and some even populated his “terribly overchaired” homes. An avid equestrian who raised Friesian horses, he once devised a wood-and-leather folding Polo Chair for Prince Charles, a version of which resides in the family’s Creemore, Ontario, ranch.
At the same time, the brand became a leader in office solutions. Today, Nienkämper is one of the most important players in contract furniture, debuting new collections, where design remains the driving force, annually at the Chicago mecca Neocon. One of the most successful lines in the company’s history is the ever-evolving Vox, which began life as a minimal conference table. The brand’s office suites are equipped with internet connectivity, their seamless integration of technology setting an industry standard.
The dawn of a modern design sensibility in Canada, the excitement of an optimistic era in major public works, the derring-do of a visionary manufacturer — all of it came together in Klaus Nienkämper’s early years, despite the hardships of founding a company centred on modern, forward-looking design in a city still fixated on Victorian mores. Today, the Nienkämper family, including Beatrix, Klaus II, and daughters Ottilie and Rebecca, who have always been a part of the brand’s soul, continue to nurture the vision of an inimitable champion of modern design – and the 20-year-old German kid on a freighter bound for Canada.
The founder of Nienkamper, a Canadian design brand renowned for its quality and craftsmanship, has died at the age of 84.