Tobias Grau was born in Hamburg in Germany in 1957.
After studying business administration in Munich, he completed a one-year independent design course at Parsons School of Design in New York in the USA in 1983. He then did an internship in the development department of Knoll International in Pennsylvania.
In 1984, Tobias Grau started out as a freelance designer in Hamburg-Altona, working on interior design for offices, agencies, smaller companies and fashion shops. For these interiors, he also created his own lights and furniture, which were made by specialist craft workshops.
This work led to his first lighting collection, presented under his own name at the furniture fair in Cologne in 1987. Alongside designing catalogues, shops and trade fair stands for his own brand, developing new lights and lighting systems became Tobias Grau's main focus.
The first Tobias Grau shop opened in Hamburg in 1988, and from 1999 further shops followed in cities including Düsseldorf and Cologne. The original aim of developing furniture and special interiors was followed, from 1990, by the expansion of his own lighting collection, which was supplemented in 2002 by a special collection for offices.
Grau designed the interior of the Tobias Grau company building. This gave him the opportunity to develop all the lights, as well as the furniture, specifically for this building – and to add many of them to the collection.
The best-known lights in the Tobias Grau collection, many of which have won design awards, include "Tai", "Bill", "George", "Soon" and "Oh China".
Tobias Grau's latest designs are the "XT PLUG&DIM" switch range as well as new LED and energy-saving lights for technical and residential use.
Since 2007, Grau has once again devoted more time to interior design, creating holistic office concepts – from the spatial layout and carpets to furniture and lighting.
One of his most recent projects is the interior design and lighting of an 18-storey office building in Hamburg, completed in May 2008.
