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Sensing a new cultural climate, a Swiss company known for modular office
systems sets its sights on the American market.
By Andrea Codrington
June 2002
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Hugo Boss was one of the first companies to outfit its U.S. offices with
USM's modular furniture system, including the shelves and table shown in
their executive offices in Manhattan.
Photograph by Roberto D'Addona
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Steel spherical joints, tubes, and panels (above) are the principal
elements of USM's modular furniture system (below), designed by architect
Fritz Haller in 1962.
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Though the company is just beginning to market its
product in the U.S., the elegant system has been used in Hugo Boss's Manhattan
showroom and office (above) and on the set of Swordfish (2001;
below).
Photo by Roberto D'Addona
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Photo by Rex Spencer
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Haller used a similar system to design a home (above) for founder
Ulrich Schärer that overlooks the company factory in
Münsingen, Switzerland.
All images, courtesy USM
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John Travolta is driving a Hummer through a window of the World Banc Investor's
Group in West Los Angeles, crushing the office's slick interior in
the process. At least that's what it looks like in the final cut of
Swordfish, the Hollywood film in which Travolta and his
costar Halle Berry play high-tech criminals with a literal view on the expression
"breaking the bank." But the scene's first take was a throwaway,
because in the battle between monster vehicle and World Banc's all-steel
storage units, the storage units won. This makes USM, the Swiss company
that manufactures the featured modular Haller Systems for homes and offices,
the first furniture manufacturer ever to foil a Joel Silver action
sequence. (The producer turned out to be more than forgiving; after filming,
Silver had the system reconfigured and placed in his own offices.)
If you're European, the Haller v. Hummer standoff comes as no surprise.
USM has built a $109 million market in Western Europe, and this success
is based largely on the system's combination of near invincible construction,
a flawless machine aesthetic, and ecologically friendly design. During
the past 35 years USM products have become the standard for the professional
classes in Germany, Switzerland, and Japan. Haller appears not only in architectural
offices, design studios, and ad agencies, but also in doctors' practices,
law firms, car dealerships, and the occasional condom manufacturer.
And as often as it appears in the workplace, the product line is also found
in the home: in Europe the current ratio of office to residential usage
is 80/20.
With a thriving European business already in place, USM is now setting its
sights on the largely untapped American market. "We decided about a
year ago that we had to focus on one market first within the United
States," says Alexander Schärer, the company's current CEO and
great-grandson of its founder, Ulrich Schärer. (USM stands for "Ulrich
Schärer" and "Münsingen," the small Swiss town
outside of Bern where the family business began as a maker of metal hardware
fixtures in the late 1800s.) "For us New York was an obvious choice.
It's the closest in mentality to Europe but is big in comparison to any
European region." USM opened its stateside office nearly seven
years ago, but until now its 12th-floor midtown location has made it
difficult to establish a strong public presence.
With the recent opening of a flagship showroom, office, and U.S.
headquarters in Soho, USM is betting that its brand of timeless Swiss design
can penetrate a market used to either oak and mahogany power furniture or
kidney-shaped desks and backpack-wearing chairs. "There's a big difference
between Americans and Europeans," Schärer says. "But we see
things changing--maybe even triggered by the latest historical developments."
Indeed, with the end of a giddy economic boom and the beginning of perhaps
a long and confusing war against terrorism, many businesses have been rudely
shaken. As a result, the pendulum has begun to swing away from values like
flux, showiness, and mobility--hallmarks of the dot-com industry's
go-go years--toward qualities like permanence, understatement, and stability--a
precise description of USM's homegrown philosophy.
It's anybody's guess as to whether the flamboyant office systems
produced in recent years will recede into design history as trendy dot-com
signifiers. For its part, USM has time--and a track record since the
early 1960s--on its side. Given the furniture's austere elegance, it may
seem ironic that the company's philosophy stems from one young businessman's
desire for revolution. That young man was Paul Schärer (father of USM's
current CEO), and the revolution was a prefab production facility and a
nonhierarchical open-plan office in the Swiss countryside.
Although avant-garde architectural thinkers like Konrad Wachsmann had already
conceived of modular structures, it was Fritz Haller, a rising star in Europe's
formalist scene, who in 1962 devised a plan for USM that would become not
only a customizable, snap-in-place building system but a blueprint for the
company's transformation from mere metal manufacturer to maker of high-end
office furniture.
Haller's so-called Maxi architecture was predicated on flexibility:
exterior and interior features like windows and doors could be dismantled
and moved within a steel framework whose elements were based on a modular
measurement of 120/60 cm. (Haller went on to conceive Midi and Mini systems
that were used widely for smaller-scale projects, including the Schärer
family's house, which overlooks the Münsingen factory.)
Paul Schärer was so satisfied with Haller's work that he commissioned
the architect to design modular furniture for the offices, and in effect
Haller Systems--and the company's new identity--was born. As news spread
through Europe's interior-design community, requests started coming in for
the system. Schärer and Haller realized they had a viable commercial
product on their hands, and in 1969 the once custom modular furniture was
released into the mass market.
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