Dieter Rams & Thomas Merkel
The German industrial designer Dieter Rams (born 1932 in Wiesbaden) completed a carpentry apprenticeship and studied architecture and interior design at the Kunstgewerbeschule Wiesbaden. From 1961 to 1997 he was chief designer at Braun and shaped the design language of numerous household and entertainment appliances, including the SK 4 radiogram (1956, with Hans Gugelot). At the same time he designed the modular 606 Universal Shelving System (1960) for the furniture manufacturer Vitsœ, which is still produced today and is represented in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His motto Less, but better stands for functionalist, restrained design without superfluous elements.
The German product designer Thomas Merkel studied product design with a focus on object design at the Fachhochschule Münster and then worked, among others, for the Cologne companies sdr+ GmbH & Co. KG and its successor S+ Systemmöbel, for which he developed furniture systems over many years. Together with Dieter Rams he designed the nesting table programme Model 010 for SDR+: a set of two low, stackable tables in black lacquered aluminium that can be used flexibly as a side table, stool or magazine rack. The programme shows a reduced, function-oriented design language in aluminium typical of Rams' work, here applied to an independent furniture system for SDR+. Reliable independent biographical information on Thomas Merkel beyond this project is only documented to a limited extent.
