Tina Roeder was born in Germany in 1975. She studied at Central Saint Martins in London, graduating with a Bachelor’s degree in 2000. Roeder went on to earn her Master's degree from the Design Academy Eindhoven under Droog in 2004. After graduating, she trained with Studio Job in Antwerp and launched her own studio in Berlin in 2007, where she continues to live and work today.
The studio specializes in works at the intersection of furniture design and conceptual, sculptural objects. Roeder’s focus is on contemporary contexts in relation to design history. With references to the Modernist movement, especially to the architectural legacy of Gerrit Rietveld and Frank Lloyd Wright, her works show parallels to Marcel Duchamp’s conceptual art and Donald Judd’s minimalism on the art historical side.
Notable projects to date include her ongoing Credenza series, a typology of cabinets aesthetically exploring architectural and societal structures and perspectives in archetypal modernist materials such as glass, leather, and steel; as well as White Billion Chairs (2002/2009), a project dealing with a rather postmodern theme and material—plastic—in an edition of 33 found monobloc chairs, each of which have been individually perforated by hand with up to ten thousand holes and then sanded. White Billion Chairs pays tribute to an everyday object in a truly unique position—the monobloc has been neglected in cultural and historical design arenas, yet continues to be massively produced and is the most-sold chair worldwide.
Roeder's work has been exhibited in galleries and fairs across the globe, including, but not limited to: Droog Amsterdam and Chamber New York (2016), Salone del Mobile in Milan on multiple occasions, and Gallery FUMI (2017) in London. Her work is included in the permanent collections of some of the world’s most esteemed institutions and private collections, including Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, Germany and Fendi’s private collection in Rome, Italy, among others.
