Braun Atelier 3
An early Rams work for Braun, marking a significant aesthetic development. The Atelier series of designs were undertaken by Rams for the first time without collaboration with Gugelot. Yet their form shows the persistence of his influence over the younger designer, particularly so in the latter's use of a concave corpus enclosed within expressed end elements. Despite this, the material language of Atelier 3 design marks a truly significant shift, one that set Rams, and indeed Braun Design, on a course significantly different from that earlier established for it by the Ulm HfG.
Most significant in the Atelier 3 design is the substitution of wood for anodised aluminium and the introduction of an asymmetrical face for the receiver module. Indeed, the transition from 'natural' materials towards the manifestly industrial, and the blocking of anthropomorphism by a rejection of symmetry, adopting instead a more abstract, machineic formalism are both central elements around which Ram's developed his functionalist vocabulary throughout the 1960's. (Interesting to note also, the evolution of the Atelier series as a precondition for the Vitsoe 606 Universal Shelving System, a design that must have been in preparation contemporaneously with the Atelier 3. Although it never seems to be mentioned, the resemblance between the Atelier 3 (also the RCS 9) and the basic 606 element is striking. Also interesting, then, is the subterranean line of influence connecting Gugelot to the 606 design through the earlier Atelier models. Gugelot's relation to the Ram's shelving system design is generally thought through its difference from his own earlier M 125...)
price: £700
