From the start, the young Weimar students behind My Bauhaus Is Better Than Yours gave themselves a crushingly large reputation to live up to. Not their alma mater’s creative legacy, mind you, but those tote bags, given away when the collective-turned-production company launched in 2009. Bearing its name in a thin block print, the bags made for the perfect product even before you saw the group’s actual work, and for awhile you couldn’t turn a single corner at a design event without running into someone wearing one. But to the credit of the now Berlin-based company’s founders — graphic designers Manuel Goller and Daniel Burchard — each furniture collection continues to hit the proverbial nail on the head, combining appealingly graphic shapes with just the right dose of functionality. Earlier this week, My Bauhaus re-launched its webshop with a new design, lower prices, and new products, some of which debuted earlier this year in Milan. We asked three of the designers behind those works to send us a list of five things that inspired their piece, from Bret Easton Ellis to solitaire.
Shift Shelves by Sebastian Schönheit

Thanks to their interlocking backboards, Sebastian Schönheit‘s hardware-free Shift shelves can either assume a traditional configuration, or be slid brazenly from side to side whenever things start to look too perfect.

Inspirations:
—Overprinting
—Collage
—Architecture
—Solitaire
—Archival systems
Group Affinity Benches and Cake Table by Manuel Raeder

Manuel Raeder‘s original Group Affinity Benches — designed to facilitate conversation at a summer school of the same name in Munich — were made from recycled walls and exhibition display materials from that city’s Haus der Kunst. Inspired directly by Raeder’s research into the communal architecture of Brazil’s Lina Bo Bardi, and indirectly by the additional list of influences below, the benches spawned both the commercial version now made by My Bauhaus and the Cake Table that Raeder added to the series this year.

Inspirations:
—Roberto Burle Marx
—Group Affinity
—Jorge Ben Jor
—Uqbar Foundation Amsterdam
—BOM DIA BOA TARDE BOA NOITE
Signore Print by Moritz Wiegand

Moritz Wiegand‘s limited-edition art object, Signore, consists of a reversible postcard diptych — featuring a cigarette-wielding gentleman on one side and some potted plants on the other — mounted on a marble-print poster and sealed in a black frame.

Inspirations:
—Bret Easton Ellis
—Disco
—Dali
—Natalie du Pasquier
—Strand & Sonne (beach and sun)