Karl Emilio Pircher *1963 in Bozen (South Tyrol) Italy, founder of Walking-Chair Design Studio GmbH
Karl Emilio Pircher, South Tyrolean, was at first a mechanical engineer and teacher at the school of engineering in Bressanone, Italy. From 1992 on student of product design with Prof. Ron Arad at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna. Later he was assistant to Emilio Vedova. He did own projects from 1995 on - like the installation of the entrance portal of the Museum for Modern Arts in Bologna. 1998 he designed a room-concept for the Secession, Vienna at the occasion of the “Young Scene” exhibition and presented a solo-exhibition at the E+Y Gallery in Tokyo. Also during this period the first Walking Chair was constructed, a hybrid animal at the border between art and design. After his diploma KEP began working for the Lomographic Society where he invented the Lomoclip, the Colorsplash Camera and the Supersampler. These products were patented as unique items and received many international desing-awards. KEP sees himself as an inventor first of all: “Good design is innovation” he says. During the Lomo-projects, his cooperation with the Swiss graphic and font designer Fidel Peugeot has been starting. Both immediately perceived each other as an essential completion. In 2003 together they established Walking-Chair Design Studio GmbH in the heart of Vienna. Karl is the happy father of a son.

Fidel Peugeot *1969 in Basel (Switzerland), founder of Walking-Chair Design Studio GmbH

Fidel Peugeot, born Sebastian Rudolf Baumgartner in Basel, Switzerland began studying communications-design with Prof Armin Hofmann, Wolfgang Weingart & Rene Pulver at the University for Design in Basel. During his studies he has already been working as a graphic designer at the renowned agencies GGK, WeberHodelSchmid and Stalder&Suter and toured in a couple of bands as a musician. Next to the written word he also cultivated the spoken: together with Karl Rottweiler he founded the Swiss label&station Radio Glaibasel (RGB107,6) inthe 80ties. After stopovers in New York and Paris he finally came to Vienna in 1991. Here he developed the first digitized handwritings, moreover a whole dynasty of pixelfonts for online purposes, the Lomofonts, the “Spruce” and the “Line” for Tyler Brulée and the Wallpaper Group amongst others. Since 2002 Fidel Peugeot has been Linotype font-designer. Additionally Peugeot works in all fields of graphic design, e.g. as illustrator, or as logo designer, like for the Albertina, Vienna. 1999 Fidel Peugeot met the Italian product-designer Karl Emilio Pircher.An immediate mutual understanding led to the establishment of the Walking-Chair Design Studio GmbH in the heart of Vienna. Fidel Peugeot is almost married and father of 2 children.