Forever relevant
Planned obsolescence is anathema to Dieter Rams and Vitsoe, the company that makes his classic furniture at its low-energy headquarters in central England.
Open your iPhone calculator and you’re looking at a version of the calculator that German designers Dieter Rams and Dietrich Lubs developed for Braun in 1980.
It’s a modern classic: held in the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The functional, clear and even beautiful design is so difficult to improve on that Apple’s designers were left simply paying homage. What irony, then, that our iPhones will barely last three years while Braun’s calculators are still going strong almost 40 years later. Apple’s designers borrowed Rams’ aesthetic, but not his ethic.
At least one company is still committed to both. Vitsoe (pronounced vit-soo) is a somewhat paradoxical company. Founded in Germany by Niels Vitsoe, a Dane, its key product – one of only three that it makes – is a flexible shelving system so understated that it exists merely to highlight the objects placed on it. Vitsoe is a company that doesn’t mind being invisible, like its shelves; but then again, you’ve probably seen these shelves many times without recognising them. Called the ‘606 Universal Shelving System’, they’re the ones that house your architect-friend’s books and ceramics, and which adorn the walls of so many Instagrammable mid-century houses.
Every part is interchangeable, so it’s a shelf as ‘system’. You buy vertical brackets that attach directly to the wall. Between these, you fit thin metal shelves or cabinetry. You can start with a small shelving unit and add to it as required; you can replace individual parts if they wear out; and you can pack them and take them with you when you move – all of this is Vitsoe’s sales pitch. Because of their flexibility, I’ve heard it said sardonically that Vitsoe’s shelves are the most divorce-friendly furniture in the world. The three products that Vitsoe makes – shelves, the ‘620 Chair’, and the ‘621 Table’ (the latest addition) – were designed by Dieter Rams, the man behind so many of Braun’s 20th-century designs. Clocks, shavers, coffee machines and toasters, Rams designed them all with a clean, uncluttered aesthetic and the belief that, if made well enough, consumer products could improve the world. Planned obsolescence is anathema to Rams. If a product is good, it should last. This was the ethos with which Niels Vitsoe began selling Rams’ home furniture designs from the late 1950s. These days, the shelves would be called environmentally friendly, but you won’t see Vitsoe explaining this. As Mark Adams, the company’s eloquent managing director says, “Recycling is defeat”. Adams was only 24 when he quit a lucrative office job to join a furniture store that happened to sell some of Vitsoe’s products. For him, Vitsoe is far more than a furniture company – it’s a “service business that just happens to make some products”, he says. And although he’d never say it (the company’s understated philosophy and a dose of English reserve would prevent him), the measure of success for Vitsoe seems to be more about how far it can spread its philosophy of ‘Living better, with less, that lasts longer’, than how many products it sells.
Vitsoe is not the only company producing longlasting, flexible shelves. Swedish company Lundia has a wood-based system that has been sold through a New Zealand-owned subsidiary for many years. It’s slightly less flexible, but the use of natural materials has long spoken to design affinities between New Zealand and Scandinavia. One significant difference between the two companies is that Vitsoe sells to the consumer directly through their website: you can’t go to a store and buy products. However, if you send them a photo of your wall, Vitsoe’s planners will design shelving combinations for you. The direct-to-consumer approach has further helped Vitsoe reduce waste.
As I walked around Vitsoe’s beautiful factory – usually an oxymoron – my thoughts turned to New Zealand. I recognised something in Vitsoe’s honest and direct use of materials – the building is exposed timber,
glass, metal and concrete, without a single brushstroke of paint. There’s something of Vitsoe in the elegant shed, number-eight wire and Colin McCahon’s use of unstretched jute canvas: a transparency and honesty, both in its building and philosophy. No matter how hard you look, there’s no veneer of corporate facade to wear off because there is no facade.
It made me wonder: what if we were to double down on these values and make ‘living better, with less, that lasts longer’ a kind of national design mantra? We seem to have the foundations built for us by our 20th-century architects and designers. Vitsoe shows us that you can, in fact, lead the world with a less-is-best mentality, and turn a good profit at the same time. Two years after the company completed the move from London to its new purpose-built, low-energy headquarters in Leamington Spa, Vitsoe seems to be entering a new and exciting chapter in its history. One wonders which of Rams’ designs it will make next. Vitsoe has always done things differently, always rejected trends and fashions. And at a time when the implications of decades of a throwaway culture are more than clear, Vitsoe’s understated, long-term, slow-but-steady philosophy offers a lesson for us all. The philosophy comes free – beautiful, long-lasting furniture is an optional extra.