Peter Ghyczy

Person

Designer

Born 1 January 1940 in Budapest, Hungary Died 10 March 2022 in Swalmen, Netherlands Peter Ghyczy completed his secondary education in Germany in 1960 and studied sculpture in Düsseldorf. From 1960 to 1967 he worked as an assistant to architect Rudolf Steinbach before graduating in architecture with a specialization in construction engineering from the Technical University of Aachen in 1967. In 1968 he took a leading position at Elastogran in Lemförde, where he was responsible for developing polyurethane products. During this period he designed the Garden Egg Chair and the GN2 Lounge Chair. From 1970 to 1972 he collaborated with Willi Fehlbaum on the Fehlbaum design collection for Vitra. For this collection he created, among others, the Spring Chair (1971) and the Endless Program (1972), a modular sofa system made of polyurethane. In 1972 he moved to Swalmen in the Netherlands and founded his own design studio, GHYCZY. In 1973 he patented casting and clamping techniques for solid materials that he had developed himself. His later designs included the MEGAWATT lamp series (1982) and the Jodie SO2 Chair (1986), which was presented at the Venice Design Biennale in 2019. In 2000 he designed his second Design Centre in the Netherlands, and in 2021 he opened a GHYCZY showroom in Amsterdam.