Q&A: Robin Maude
The head planner of Vitsœ’s Marylebone shop on system thinking, doing more with less and the 10 principles of good design
Interview: Mark Riddaway
What are Vitsœ’s roots?
This is quite an interesting time for us, because we’re into our 60th year, and we are in this new shop in time to mark it—it’s a coincidence, but one that worked out very well. The company was started by Niels Vitsœ, a Danish furniture dealer, in conjunction with Dieter Rams, the famous German designer best known for being the head of design at Braun, responsible for all those famous consumer products: razors, record players, food mixers. The inception of Vitsœ was based on the challenges of post-war buildings—all those new flats. It was about creating a system of thought-out design for small buildings that require efficient storage. That’s where the shelving system came from.
Vitsœ uses the word ‘system’ a lot. What does it mean to you?
It’s a very modular approach. The 606 Universal Shelving System has various components that can sit inside its structure, meaning you can add to it and manipulate it over time. The 620 Chair Programme allows you to buy single armchairs and with the addition of a simple joining plate turn them into a sofa. System thinking is very adaptable. When done well, it responds to your life demands—if you move house, or if that second bedroom that was an office becomes a nursery, for example. And you can build it up over time. Some of the best relationships we have are ones where the customer doesn’t have the budget to do everything in one hit, but they’ll do a certain section, get the structure right, then order a new shelf every other month, every other paycheque, and gradually and organically get that system they always wanted. We have customers who date from the 1960s—they’re always adding to and adapting the system.
We talk about ‘less is more’, about buying sustainably, about buying things that will last a lifetime. The frequency with which our furniture ends up in people’s wills is testament to its durability and to the fondness people have for the system.
Is the shelving simple to install?
It has its nuances. We have a planning team here to help develop that knowledge and educate customers to the possibilities of the system. But it is very simple. Most of our customers install it themselves. As long as you’re handy with a drill and have a little DIY knowledge, we have most of the tricky bits covered for you. We send what we call a spacer level—it’s basically a jig for you to mark out the system. It takes all of the head-scratching out of the equation, all the worry about getting it perfect. One of the most important things for many of our customers is that experience of taking it through their front door and being able to open the first box and get on and install it.
The business is based around three products—the shelving, the chairs and the 621 Table—all of which were designed in the early 1960s. How has it resisted the temptation to extend the range?
If anything, we’ve stripped things away from our suite of products. Rather than designing more products, we’ve refined the ones we have, we’ve opened them up. It’s very much a mantra here: less, but better. They stand the test of time, even as technologies come and go. We get questioned quite a lot about our ‘CD shelf’—our 16cm shelf. But it’s not a CD shelf, it’s always been 16cm deep; it just so happens that the CD came along and fitted it perfectly. The CD is now a bit of bygone technology, but that shelf lives on. It’s perfect for small books. The crossover with the audio side of Braun did dictate some of the original sizings, so the 36cm deep shelf holds audio equipment and vinyl records quite neatly. That might have seemed obsolete a few years ago, but they’re some of our biggest customers now, the audiophiles.
Have your products changed much since they were first designed 60 years ago?
Not at all, really. There are some tweaks that have happened over the years to keep up with advances in manufacturing techniques, or from our knowledge of the system and its capabilities going over that 60 year period, but we’ve always developed things that can be backward-compatible with pieces from the sixties. A lot of the tweaks over the past 60 years have been based on customer feedback. Sometimes the best ideas come from customers. It’s more than just a financial transaction, it’s a knowledge transaction, and that’s quite a two-way thing.
Does Vitsœ furniture fit best with a particular style of architecture?
Absolutely not. You really shouldn’t be too wedded to the idea of period. Before we moved here, we were in an old Arts and Crafts building on Duke Street. That may have seemed a bit incongruous for a modern design company, but actually it helped to highlight that our furniture fits absolutely anywhere. That shop did us a great service: it opened up the idea that it can complement all sorts of environments.
My introduction to Vitsœ was partly through my father, who was renovating a 16th century cottage in Bradford-upon-Avon and was struggling to find anything that didn’t disrupt the aesthetic. In 2009, Dieter Rams had an exhibition at the Design Museum, and there was an episode of the Culture Show about him, which we both watched. We realised that this system wouldn’t jar with the architecture, and that it would also satisfy the vast book collection that my dad has carried around with him since he was a kid.
Is the muted palette part of that?
It is. The reason we have this very limited palette is that it extends the lifetime of that purchase and means that it works almost anywhere. Black will never go out of fashion; the white isn’t a harsh white, it’s a very neutral white. In fact, one of the most difficult things about trying to grab people’s attention to the system is that it is so discrete. It’s all about what you put on the shelves, rather than the shelves themselves. That muted, quiet aesthetic overrides anything. It flies in the face of fashion.
You manufacture your furniture in Leamington Spa. A company with German roots that makes its products in Britain seems like a reversal of the usual pattern! How did that come about?
It was our managing director, Mark Adams, who brought the company to the UK. Mark had become very friendly with Niels and Dieter, and had set up a branch of Vitsœ over here. When Niels retired, Mark became managing director and took the opportunity to bring pretty much all the manufacturing over to Britain. The factory in Leamington Spa is an amazing place. It’s very much a system-built building. It’s very adaptable. There are these channels that run throughout the building and divide it into bays, which is an echo of the shelving system—we refer to each column of shelves as a bay. You can retrofit cables and services at any point, when the production needs to be reorganised in some way, or if we have a new team that needs space created for it. The building has been designed to constantly evolve to the needs of the business.
Has your customer base changed during your time at Vitsœ?
I do sense that we’re getting a younger crowd. We’re not a cheap product, although we are good value because of the longevity. In the past that has put off young people, who don’t have a lot of money, but I do think that we’re reaching more generations now—younger people who are prepared to save up for things that are good, and good for the planet. You don’t have to go crazy with it—it’s about working out what you really need, about making sure that the money you pass over to us really is an investment. We encourage that thoughtful, considered approach. We don’t want people to buy things impulsively; that’s why we have a team of planners to help our customers give some real thought to what they’re purchasing.
Dieter Rams famously came up with 10 key principles of design. Do you still follow them?
We use them as our checklist for everything we do. The world would be a better place if they were applied more widely. It’s a manifesto for any young designer, engineer or architect. There’s an awful lot of ill-considered things brought to market just to make a quick buck, and people are fed up with buying stuff that just fails. Most of the principles go beyond product, as well. Even things like financial services could benefit from following them.
You’ve been in Marylebone a long time…
We’ve been in the area for 16 years of our 60 year history. We started a few doors down, where Sourced Market is now. Our production facility and HQ in Leamington Spa is just over an hour by train from Marylebone station—that was part of the thinking in locating it there. We whizz up and down all the time. Marylebone has a strong design history, it’s a retail hub, and we have some great neighbours and friends out there. That’s another reason we’re so fond of being in this area: Tracey Neuls a few doors up, David Mellor just up the road. At a time when traditional retail is a bit shaky, there are people doing fantastic things, trying to work out how to retain that spirit of the British high street—we’re proud to count ourselves among them.
Is Dieter Rams still involved?
He’s 87 years old now, but he is still a big part of the company. He was here for the opening of the shop. He is in constant contact with Mark. We still put lots of things under his nose, just for that nod. He’s very encouraging of Vitsœ, but he thinks his legacy is in safe hands with us, which it is. We hold ourselves to account. I like to think we’re honouring his 10 principles every single day.
DIETER RAMS’ 10 PRINCIPLES FOR GOOD DESIGN
1. Good design is innovative
2. Good design makes a product useful
3. Good design is aesthetic
4. Good design makes a product understandable
5. Good design is unobtrusive
6. Good design is honest
7. Good design is long-lasting
8. Good design is thorough down to the last detail
9. Good design is environmentally friendly
10. Good design is as little design as possible