CHRONOLOGICAL HISTORY OF THE  

FURNITURE DESIGNED BY
PROFESSOR FRITZ HALLER FROM
1963 TO 2012.
 

In 1963, Professor Fritz Haller (1924 – 2012) was

commissioned to design an office building for a
client based in Münsingen near Berne in
Switzerland.

Having completed this office building Professor Fritz

Haller was asked to design the storage furniture for
this new office.

An important
requirement was that the
furniture could be
manufactured “in-house”
by the company’s own
engineers.
 
To this day, Professor
Fritz Haller’s furniture
range is still made in-
house in Münsingen and
named after him.

The original concept was incredibly simple: to use

the minimum number of components to make the
largest number of possible permutations - just like
the hugely successful Meccano system.

The system was based around a simple chromed

brass ball joint which measured 25.4mm diameter
and was drilled with six holes of MF8X1X8 diameter,
allowing for a frame that could be built in any
square or rectangular format. This idea of a ball
joint was not new. Ball joints were already being
used for many applications at that time, notably in
the exhibition industry to form space frames for
display stands, which could be assembled and
disassembled for transport to the next trade show or
exhibition.

Attached to this ball joint were a

wide selection of different
lengths of chromed steel tubing
which were used to form a
These tubes were industry standard 19mm diameter steel tubes
made from standard 1.2mm thick steel and it is the chromed
version that has stood the test of time, although for a few years the
factory experimented with gold plated for the Middle-East
markets and also black anodized. Both these finishes were
eventually dropped in favor of the hard wearing chrome.

Next came how to fix the

tubes to the ball joint
without unsightly screws
and here Professor Haller
opted for a hidden screw
with two “dovetailed
wedges”. When
 
loosened, these formed a
circle and when
tightened against each
other they formed an
oval perfect for clamping
inside the tube to hold
everything together.

Any builder or Do It Yourself enthusiast will

immediately recognize this principle in the
“rawlplug” which is used everyday in building
projects the world over.

Finally, to finish off the space frame, Professor Fritz

Haller sourced a simple 30mm black plastic foot with
an MF8X1X8 thread, which could be screwed into
the existing holes on the ball joint. For mobility, a
chrome hooded chair castor was selected, with black
plastic wheels and again a MF8X1X8 pin, allowing it
to be screwed to the ball joint.

 
These few items, all selected in 1963 from off-the-shelf industry
standard components, have formed the skeleton of the USM
system from the very beginning and remain fundamentally
unchanged to this day - indeed only the new connector design
differs from these 1960s principles.

Once the space frame has been constructed to the height, length,
and depth of the customers requirements, we then look at
“paneling out” the furniture.

Professor Haller wanted customers to be able to build the system

themselves, without clever tooling or fixings, so the panels he
used for the shelves, backs, sides and internal divisions were made
to be a simple “push-in” fit, not screwed or glued.

To this end, the first

generation of steel panels
were a very simple flat
steel plate with the edges
beveled in order to
 
provide some grip around
the tubes. No other fixing
was required so quite
literally “a child could do
it”.

In 1970, Professor Haller ceased to be involved

directly with the development of the product and all
further developments were then carried out by the
factory's own in-house team.

The early panels were a

very simple shape and
continued to be
manufactured until 1987,
when the in-house design
team developed a second
generation of panels.
 
These second generation
panels allowed the user
more fixing options for
adding doors, extension
shelves, filing racks, and
adjustable intermediate
panels.

The second generation panels introduced a series of

small holes which were drilled into the side of the
panels on all four edges. With new components
came new model numbers, such as 11207, 11211
and 11212 to name just a few. Overnight,
customers enjoyed far more flexibility and variability
for their furniture designs.

These new side panels

required new fixings in
order to hold all the
numerous accessories in
place so a new fixing clip
was designed, which due
 
to its shape was
affectionately known by
the engineers as the
“Half Moon Clip”. To the
purists it was model
11379.

Whilst the new panels and fixings were a fantastic

leap forward they had been designed by in-house
designers at the factory, not by Professor Haller.
However the designers were very careful to ensure
that the “First Generation” components could still be
fitted and work side by side with “Second
Generation” components, so it is very common to
see installations throughout the world where both
versions are fitted side by side.

With the change over to the new style fixing clips came a flurry of
component redesigns to work with the new panels. One of the first
components to be redesigned was the extension shelf drawer slide,
which needed to have revised fixing holes at the front and rear of
the slide.

Another component to be restyled was the old-style door hinge

which was chromed and upgraded to include a pneumatic gas strut
although this strut was not successful and was eventually
superseded by the spring operated door hinge which we see in use
today and which is frankly a far superior design to its two
predecessors.

   

It was in 1990 that probably the biggest leap forward of the whole
design story came, with the launch of the new style “tube
connector”. The old style dovetail wedges had been loyal work
horses for 27 years and almost never broke, but they suffered from
being very hard to use in inexperienced hands because they were
fiddly and often needed not one but several pairs of hands to fit.

In 1990, the new style

connector model 12451
was released and just like
the new door, this new
connector made
installations much faster
and easier as it was a  
one-piece item, again
based very closely on the
expanding Rawlplug
design used in the
building industry for
fixing things to walls.

One component that took some time to redesign

was the door panel. The first generation door
worked with the new style gas hinge, but it required
ten screws and a lot of fiddling around to ensure it
was centered correctly in the framework.

This was solved in

1995 with the launch of
the second generation
door panel and the new
spring hinge, which can
be fitted using just two
  screws. It also
benefited from a new
edge profile which
meant that the door is
automatically squared
when assembled, even
by a novice.
When this new door panel was launched, the engineers loved it
immediately, because it was so easy to fit and dramatically
reduced installation time on sites.

Since 1995, the design team at the factory have continued to bring
out new designs and accessories every year. These have been
primarily focused on electrical add-ons or accessories. Professor
Haller’s original design for the storage elements that carry his
name have for the most part remained unchanged, which is a
testament to his ineguity in creating a flexible system for
residential, commercial and retail applications, using just a few
industrially available components.

Fifty years after Professor Haller launched his furniture design, he

sadly passed away in 2012 and I do not expect to see another
furniture designer produce something of such elegant simplicity
for many years to come.

Too many designers today want to reinvent the wheel. What

Professor Haller did was take standard industrially available
components straight off the shelf and incorporate them
intelligently to produce a vast array of options that others had
missed. This forsight now gives customers hours of enjoyment,
building and rebuilding year after year.

Already - he is sadly missed!

Scott Appleton
Managing Director
Scott Howard Office Furniture Ltd
London - England