The Historia Supellexalis U for USM Haller

 

USM Haller

A Fritz; A Ball; A System

Developed in the mid-1960s as an office furniture system, the inherent flexibility and variability of USM Haller’s modular system has allowed it to naturally evolve alongside office practices and realities; for example, alongside the shift in recent decades from rigid to more flexible office scenographies, alongside the rise in recent decades of home working, or, most recently, with the USM Security Screen which naturally, and quickly, allows any existing USM reception desk to be effortlessly updated and reinvented for our Corona age.

Similarly in the domestic landscape. A landscape USM Haller quickly inhabited and where over the decades the inherent flexibility and variability of its modular system has seen it naturally adapt to the ever evolving realities of domestic life: the domestic life of both the private individual with all its personal fluctuations, high, lows and unpredictability, but also of communal society and, for example, its ever increasing collective networked, digital structure.

But despite its indoor success, system USM Haller hasn’t found its way out of doors……

…..yet…..

USM Haller: Garden, Terrace, Balcony.....

Our increasingly networked, digital, virtual society is not only changing our relationship to innumerable everyday activities, activities such as personal communication, shopping or watching television to name but three, and thereby activities which a few short years ago seemed destined to remain unchanged for ever, but is also changing our relationship to work, be that in terms of what we do, where we do it or how we do it.

Changes which invariably place both new demands on our furniture, and our understanding of the term “functional” in context of furniture; an understanding which a few short years ago seemed destined to remain unchanged for ever.

With the showcase USM Haller HomeWork smow Cologne consider responses to such evolutions with the assistance of the USM Haller modular furniture system.

USM Haller HomeWork, smow Cologne

Following three years of renovations and redesign the principle house of the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich is once again open for visitors.

Three years which have not only seen the physical structure renovated and redesigned, but also the presentation concept and foci.

Museum für Gestaltung Zürich

As regular readers will be well aware, here at smow blog HQ we’re very much of the opinion that fashion isn’t design. Never was. Never will be. Design, and without wanting to wade too deep into the definition quagmire, arose from applied craft/applied art, fashion is applied craft/applied art. And so while unquestionably a creative discipline, isn’t design. Neither is Graphic.

Design can however inspire and influence fashion, past decades recalling numerous occasions of fashion houses being motivated by designers’ works, a particularly apposite recent example being the news that Swiss fashion house Akris have based their Spring/Summer 2018 collection on the works of Alexander Girard, news which motivated us to retrieve a few classic items from the smow blog wardrobe……

One of the genuine highlights for us at Milan Furniture Fair 2017 was without question the launch of USM Haller E – a new development by which electricity can be supplied to USM Haller units, electricity which can be used to power LED lighting or USB chargers housed unobtrusively in the structural tubes. “Unobtrusively” being the keyword as it means the functionality of the system is extended without altering, adjusting or otherwise impacting on the aesthetics of the system. A genuinely very exciting development and one which extends not just the functionality but also the value the system.

And which got us thinking…….

USM Haller E, as seen at Milan Furniture Fair 2017

As older readers will be well aware, little gets us down quite like Milan Furniture Fair. Every year our only wish as we cross the Alps is that we will find something to make us thankful that we did. Milan Furniture Fair 2017 produced more such moments than the average year, which we suppose means we’ll be back next year!!

Our Milan Furniture Fair 2017 High Five!!

USM Airportsystems at Passenger Terminal Expo 2016 Cologne

The Swiss architect Fritz Haller famously developed a space colony as a means to allow him to explore his ideas

May is traditionally the month in which the furniture design industry starts winding down towards summer…. fortunately, because after Milan

Just as January means Cologne, April is Milan. And normally only Milan. In 2015 however we managed to spice things

USM Stahlbausystem Haller advertising

Before Fritz Haller achieved international recognition for the USM modular furniture system, he was…….. a steel construction system! Born in

USM Privacy Panels

For reasons far too abstract, intangible, and potentially libellous, to go into, we didn’t report on the inaugural presentation of

Konrad Wachsmann, Fritz Haller, USM

In our 5 New Design Exhibitions for January 2015 post we noted with dismay, and an unmistakable hint of accusation,

According to our pictorial review of March 2013 it was “a month of travelling: Stuttgart, Chemnitz, Weimar, Dessau….. its amazing

Cold as February 2014 unquestionably was, we managed to warm ourselves with exhibitions looking at the 1920s medial representation of

Whereas in years past we would have just blithely stated that January, as ever, saw us in Cologne for IMM

Whether ’tis nobler in the muscles to suffer The slings and arrows of short telomeres, Or to rise up against

Fritz Haller Architect and Researcher Swiss Architecture Museum Basel USM Pavillon

Until August 24th the Swiss Architecture Museum, SAM, in Basel is staging “Fritz Haller. Architect and Researcher”, an exhibition devoted

Milan Furniture Fair 2014 USM Haller

We round up our Milan 2014 coverage with a company we admire, but about whom we find it all but

Unsichtbare Dinge Typisch chinesisch Typisch deutsch at the Museum für Völkerkunde Hamburg Germany erledigt

Mayday! Mayday! Don’t panic. It’s just a public holiday. You’ll survive. Barbecue something…… And afterwards, when everyone else is back

USM powder coating facility Münsingen

As a general rule we ignore rules. Especially those rules that start with “don’t” However, when we were told not

usm window lock

If you visit the Bussalp restaurant above the Swiss resort town of Grindelwald you can experience a curious, inconspicuous, almost

Passagen Cologne 2014 System USM Haller Facetten (smow) Köln

Aside from death, taxes and heartbreak, the only other certainty in life is that you will, with an unnerving regularity,

With autum’s algid wind in our faces and the promise of mince pies and Glühwein in our tails we approached

Kaisersaal Erfurt Thonet Reihenbestuhlung

In 1808 Napoleon had a problem. Or better put, in 1808 Napoleon had a whole continent of problems. Spain, Austria,