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[Nature sounds, birds chirping]

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[Nature sounds, birds chirping]

[Typerwriter typing]

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[Bells ring, street sounds]

[Crowd murmuring]

[Applause]

[Crowd laughter]

[Applause]

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Dieter started designing in the early 50s.

It was after the war, after enormous upheaval.

It was also a time of great precariousness, in a way.

And a great change, and people wanting change. And change happening technologically.

I'm trying to think, "Why is he so interesting for people now?"

And I think maybe there is also a kind of precarious phase that we're going through.

Also of great technological change, also of great social change.

Dieter met Ingeborg when he was at Braun. She was a photographer working in the photography department.

They're a very private couple.

They're not out in the limelight, they're not out together at the big red carpet do's.

They've been together for over 50 years, the two of them. It's quite lovely, actually.

He keeps himself in a very tranquil bubble.

I mean, he's lived in the same house for almost... 50 years?

You know, he hasn't moved.

You know, he gives talks, he gives lectures, he travels, there's shows about his work.

He talks to people, he's very generous with his time.

But he doesn't have hobbies.

His work is his life, his life's his work. And he's not really interested in anything else.

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Something that's not actually talked about much is that design is also politics.

Although they didn't really talk about it in that way,

him and his fellow students were very passionate about creating a world that was a better place.

And much more democratic.

You know, they'd just come out of the shadow of this terrible time in history,

and there was a lot of talk about design to give people freedom.

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There was huge change going on. It was about rebuilding Germany,

it was about rethinking who people were, what they were, how they were living.

I think that's very much where he got this sort of much more social attitude to design.

And a lot of that thinking came from Ulm.

Ulm School was set up after the war in the '50s.

The follower from Bauhaus.

Even more kind of restrained and puritan in a way.

So functional, so reduced.

The Braun Brothers connected with the Hochschule fuür Gestaltung in Ulm.

They were exploring the possibilities through electrical objects in the home.

Electrical appliances in the home.

And Rams came into that world

bringing his experience into this new way in which electronic objects were changing.

The designers from Ulm that he worked with originally at Braun

were very into this modular feeling, these clean lines, this taking away.

Dieter picked it up very quickly and then made it his own very quickly as well.

The SK 4 was a turning point in design.

And it was especially a turning point for Braun.

Radios were a kind of furniture at this time

and Braun's designers wanted to get away from the furniture.

The first SK 4 sketches were made by Dieter

with a wooden case, with a record player on the top and a radio on the top.

But this really didn't work.

So they asked Gugelot if he can find a solution.

He was one of the very important designers of the mid-century,

so he had a good relationship to Erwin and Artur.

And Gugelot very quickly found a solution to make it with metal,

fully in metal, with wooden parts on the left and right sides.

And the last problem was how to cover it, on the top.

So first they made a metal one, but this didn't work.

♪ Radio plays Opera ♪

Because it was a clear lid, that allowed them to put all of the controls on top.

Whereas previously they had been on the front, now they could be on top

and seen through the lid for the first time.

♪Jazz

♪Jazz

Were there any women in the design department?

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Actually I have seen this product's photo, but I have never touched.

So... very good.

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There's a reason that Erwin Braun pushed Rams forward and put him in the limelight for his designs.

He looks the part, he's super photogenic.

But there's this fixation that the press tends to do of saying

that all responsible, utilitarian, reduced design is Dieter Rams.

And it's not. And he keeps saying it!

A lot of his designs are co-designs.

A lot of stuff that's attributed to him was actually done by other members of his team, but

people just want to put one face, one name to this whole aesthetic and this whole design position.

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You talk to anybody who grew up between the '50s and, say, the '90s

Just about anyone will remember having a Braun product of some kind.

Whether it was the hair dryer or their father's razor or the coffee machine.

But you know I when I first encountered Rams' work, I found it very difficult, very masculine.

It's quite clinical in a way.

It was not until I went to visit him at his house,

and there I saw him living with all his products.

I began to really appreciate and really understand the skill involved with them and the quality.

There was this idea that domestic appliances are there to serve the user.

Therefore it had to stay in the background.

It mustn't push to the front, it mustn't insist on it's own presence.

It just had to do its job and be out of the way.

And that was absolutely fundamental to the 10 Principles.

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In the 1950s, Rams was at a trade exhibition and is introduced

by Otto Zapf, a furniture maker

to this Danish guy called Niels Vitsoe.

Over the next couple of years, they develop the ideas

so that in 1959 Vitsoe was formed.

As they're developing these ideas, Rams realizes that he's moonlighting on the side

from his full-time employment at Braun.

That he has to go to Erwin Braun and say, "Well, can I continue doing this work in any formal way?"

[Machinery whirs]

I had just graduated, moving into my first flat.

I read about a shop that had just opened on the West End.

One day I walked in and they were installing on the wall a black shelving system.

The owner explained to me that it was designed by this guy called Dieter Rams.

I went "Oh, hang on. Well, I've got a Braun alarm clock and a Braun razor."

So when he mentioned the name Rams, it just rang half a bell.

About a week later he said, "Well, would you like to come and work with us?"

And that was where it all started.

[sounds of furniture assembly]

Nice to meet you again.

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But I like this. And children like it, too.

And I like the feeling. It's very good. It's very...

Compliments to all of you.

We probably have one or two of the original Rams

back catalogue that we would like to put back into production.

The one that, personally, I have always felt we should bring back from the early '60s was this chair called 601.

A very simple outline profile with a T shaped aluminum leg.

I've observed the way in which its form and profile and method of upholstery have

found their way into some other products on the market.

I think it was probably 40 or 50 years ahead of its time.

This is the one where we've looked at increasing the height slightly.

I don't like increasing the height. I would prefer the arm length.

If you get some steel part...

screwed together with the leg. Yeah?

Dieter, should we offer this chair in fabric or only in leather?

- No! No, in leather only. - Only in leather.

- Same procedure as with the 620. - Same procedure as every year.

These things should speak the same language. And that makes sense.

It was always what I was trying to do with the Braun products.

Even if a kitchen machine is different from a radio or from a hifi.

But all together it makes one family.

And the same should happen with this. People should go, "Oh, that comes from Vitsoe."

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[birds chirping]

Dieter is a man with incredible sensitivity and understanding

and appreciation of the natural world.

In the 1970s, he was one of the early voices saying, "What are we doing to our planet?"

And he woke up sort of mid-70s and went "Woah, am I part of the problem?"

"I'm making all of this injection-molded plastic stuff."

And that was where the 10 Principles for Good Design came from,

because he was questioning himself.

Saying, "Well actually, are we producing something that is adding value to the planet,

that is not just depleting the resources?"

The challenge is how we can take Dieter's very strongly held belief forward in another generation.

[construction noises]

We have now been spending many years designing a new building for Vitsoe.

A new headquarters and production building. But equally will be a residential building.

That building, and so many of the ideas and techniques that we're deploying in it,

are completely formed by his Principles for Good Design.

We're seeing it as being a living experiment.

So Dieter, there you have our little building.

- A lot of space. - A lot of space.

Yeah.

And so you're walking now into the main assembly area.

We will be making the chairs right here.

And then we will have divisions coming down from the beam, hanging the full height of the building.

So we have five bedrooms.

Because we have people come for 6 or 8 weeks from Los Angeles or New York or Munich.

When they are newly recruited, then they can come and stay here, live in the building.

Got the good windows, so lovely natural light.

We've designed it that we should have no lights on during daylight hours. No lights at all.

It's a special fire board, and it's on both sides.

You have to create a fire barrier from the plant room out to here.

And I wanted to be completely honest that that is a fire barrier.

Ok.

For me, it's almost like a paper is on it. But you're saying it's only printed on it.

- It's just printed on it. - And you will leave the printing?

Yeah. But we could take it off, we could sand it off. But I quite like the honesty.

It looks more honest if it's away, because...

It's a little bit irritating.

I was of the opinion that it was the cover material on the panels.

- So, sand it? - I agree with that. Sand it.

Fine, we will sand it. If we see Alastair, we'll -

Tell Alastair we're sanding it, ok?

So our commercial kitchen will be here, and then all of our tables and benches -

because we want to stop the whole building for half an hour at lunchtime.

And a cook prepares the food and serves everybody here.

- So that will be the canteen? - This is the canteen.

This is beech.

And this is birch.

Yeah, wonderful.

The rule in this building has been no paintbrushes.

Natural materials, natural finishes.

So many of the people who have worked in this building

have had to get used to the fact

that where their workmanship, their craftsmanship is normally covered up,

in this building it will not be covered up.

So you've seen the quality of their work

has gone much higher because they're all taking care.

Because they know that their pipes and their wires are all on display.

In the '50s and '60s, there was this drive for modern, the new.

But then came the '70s.

Rams' type of design was rejected by a lot of designers.

They were looking for colors and shapes and swirls and statements.

It's only later as designers got really sick of that and said, "There must be something more to this,"

they realized that the directions we were going in had become very decadent.

Then this interest in Rams began to grow again.

And I think it also had a lot to do with Mark Adams and Vitsoe.

And going through this effort to spread the message.

We do not need all of this space immediately.

- The ground space? - Yeah.

Only. That's the number one on the list. Number one.

And if we can't achieve it, we won't do it.

I think the world is going where you just try to create one rigid culture in a space.

And I think we working at Vitsoe would benefit from other people around, as other people would from us.

But they have to be the right people.

We'll go and get some food and drink. We'll just go and walk over.

Can we leave the...

I normally don't wear hats. So now I have a little problem.

Is it too tight?

- I have the feeling I have to... - It's too much pressure?

- Yeah. - No.

It's the english word of "es juckt mir den Kopf."

- Ah yes, he needs to scratch his head. - Oh, he needs to scratch his head! Ok.

- Because he's unused to it. - Now you can scratch the head.

Much better.

I need fresh air on my head.

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There's a lot of reasons why the chair is so central for furniture designers.

The chair stands free in space. You know, a table would normally be covered, the bed is not very public.

It has always been the symbol of power, of politics, if you think about the thrones in antique societies.

And all this makes the chair extremely attractive for designers.

He's very clear about the people he likes.

He's also from that generation where designers dared to say, "This, in my opinion, is bad design."

Today you would more often hear, "This is interesting," you know?

And you never know what does that mean, "interesting?"

Yes, of course, I think the whole world is interesting.

But I'm currently thinking asking myself whether we're not entering a time where

this question, "Is it good or not good?" is maybe becoming more important again.

We just can't afford to be so indifferent.

What Dieter Rams once told us when we prepared the exhibition was that

he wants to design not only a single object,

but he wants to design a whole environment, or also philosophically, a world in which people could live in.

Rams has always been Rams.

You can recognize it, it has this look of a certain color palette, a certain formal approach

That is what makes his design work so convincing.

Today especially, when things change so quickly.

And I think Rams shows that design can have a very strong orientation.

And it's not that there's no evolution. He's still working on things.

But he's working on details. But he's not questioning his general approach.

[Car rumbling]

Isn't that nice?

Ok, you can say it's a hobby, but...

I like this hobby!

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[Wind chimes]

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[Crowd sounds]

We wanted to show a permanent exhibition about Dieter Rams.

Dieter said, "Okay, I have a message also about the future of design,

about good design, and it will be in good hands in a public museum."

We have his private papers, we have quite a big Braun collection, and we have all of the mockups.

With his mockups we can show the design process.

Design should give answers to problems, not make new problems. But many designs make new problems.

And this is what I like very much about Dieter, that he says we have to make the world better.

[Applause]

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[Laughter]

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I think Dieter's surprisingly pessimistic about the future.

But then I think he's also maybe not so aware of how much his principles have influenced people.

Because Rams' design is not just design, it's a whole attitude.

It incorporates everything about how you live.

It's about getting rid of excess, visual clutter, and just living with what you need.

Less but better is quite an amazing legacy.

What better thing could you want than that?

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