Infrastructure As Space. Fritz Haller’s Architecture Systems

Abstract

Anyone who has a chance to take a look at the permanent furniture collection at the Museum of Modern Art in New York will discover there something that appears to be a design object but, strictly speaking, is not. This may sound mad but there is method to the madness, systematic method, to be precise. For what appears to be a design object is in fact a system: a simple, yet highly sophisticated furniture system. As its elegant appeal instantly suggests, this is no ordinary object. Small, chrome-plated brass balls, each with six holes, are joined together by chrome-plated tie rods to create a structure that is secured from within by a special thread. These few components suffice to assemble furniture for a whole variety of uses. The “USM Haller” furniture system, developed in 1963 by the Swiss architect Fritz Haller and the entrepreneur Paul Schärer, reveals itself on closer inspection to be a three-dimensional stacking game and geometric modular construction system, the components of which can be infinitely reorganized and expanded as required. Whether used as a bookcase, wall unit, wall paneling, filing frame or reception desk, this furniture system is held to have endless scope. It’s fundamental structural quality –modularity– determines its scalability. And its modularity continues within. The hanging file frame that fits exactly into the drawer of a filing cabinet unequivocally dictates a certain way of ordering knowledge, by which documents and files can be optimally compiled, organized, and archived. Every gesture becomes part of a logistical workflow; the furniture system and filing system fuse as a single administrative apparatus. Yet USM is more than just a logistically calibrated microarchitecture and the epitome of functionality. Given its capacity to geometrically organize knowledge and –its unique structural feature– to be reconfigured, time after time, as a different object, it must be read also as a cipher for a superordinate strategy for the system-theoretical development of architecture.