otl aicher the world as

design

Otl Aicher (1922–1991) was an outstanding personality in modern design, he was a co-founder of the legendary Hochschule für Gestaltung (HfG), the Ulm School of Design, Germany. His works since the fifties of the last century in the field of corporate design and his pictograms for the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich are major achievements in the visual communication of our times.

Otl Aicher‘s writings are explorations of the world, a sub-stantive part of his work. In moving through the history of thought and design, building and construction, he assures us of the possibilities of arranging existence in a humane fashion. As ever he is concerned with the question of the conditions needed to produce a civilized culture. These conditions have to be fought for against apparent factual or material constraints and spiritual and intellec- tual substitutes on offer.

Otl Aicher likes a dispute. For this reason, the volume contains polemical statements on cultural and political subjects as well as practical reports and historical ex- position. He fights with productive obstinacy, above all for the renewal of Modernism, which he claims has largely exhausted itself in aesthetic visions; he insists the ordi- nary working day is still more important than the “cultural Sunday“.

Wolfgang Jean Stock

otl aicherthe world asdesign

www.ernst-und-sohn.de

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contents

9 preface by sir norman foster10 introduction16 crisis of modernism28 doing without symbols36 aesthetic existence40 the third modernism62 charles eames66 hans gugelot77 flying machines by paul mc cready85 bauhaus and ulm94 architecture as a reflection of the state

113 the non-usable useful item124 the signature132 intelligent building138 my workspace does not yet exist143 difficulties for architects and designers150 appearance167 graphic designers’ space to be themselves175 a new typeface179 the world as design190 afterword192 sources

Otl Aicher was a good friend, mentor and working col-league. There was never a division between conversa-tions on our work or any other subject – the topicsranged far and wide. Often as he was talking, Otl wouldpick up a piece of paper and illustrate his point withcareful strokes of a ball-point. The combination wasuniquely personal – witty, incisive and often thought-provoking.During his summer retreats in August at Rotis, Otl

would commit his thoughts to paper and these laterbecame the subject of two books. Before then some ofthem had appeared randomly as articles in magazines orin editions. I remember being frustrated because I couldnot read German, even though I might guess at theircontent from the many hours spent with Otl hearingtheir story lines. I was also upset because I so muchwanted to share Otl’s insights with others around me; heseemed to be able to say with clarity and eloquencemany of the things I felt needed to be said – as well assome of the things which we did not agree about. In hislast years Otl was, I felt, at the height of his creativity inmany fields, which ranged from visual communicationand new typefaces to political and philosophical com-ment.Following the tragedy of Otl’s death I felt compelled to

help make it possible for all of his writings to be trans-lated and published in English. Otl saw through the stu-pidities of fashion and vanity. His opinions were sorelevant to the issues of today that I believed it wasimportant for them to be shared with a wider English-speaking audience – relevant to my own generation aswell as students, professionals and the lay public.Otl wrote rather in the way that he spoke and after

some debate with those who were closer to him and whowere also German speakers it was decided to leave thetranslation in its conversational form. We also felt that itwas important to respect Otl’s passionate objection tocapital letters for starting sentences of marking tradi-tionally important words. Perhaps it underlined his scornfor the pompous.There was an integrity about the way that Otl lived,

practised and preached. He would probably have beenuncomfortable with the word preach, but I use it here inits most honourable and inspiring sense.

Norman FosterLondon, January 1994

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Introduction

by Wolfgang Jean Stock

1In 1950, on a very early visit to the Federal Republic,Hannah Arendt noted: “If you watch the Germans bus-tling and stumbling through the ruins of their thousand-year-old history, you realize that this bustling hasbecome their principal weapon for protecting themselvesagainst reality.”Two years after currency reform and five years after

the end of the war the shock of defeat and horror aboutthe crimes committed in the name of Germany had beenlargely suppressed. In the face of everyday privations themajority of West Germans had accustomed themselves tothe normality of survival. Responsibility for the causesand consequences of the Nazi regime was left asideamidst the compulsory reality of occupation and handlingshortages. People began vigorous clearance of the fieldsof rubble, but the rubble inside them stayed where itwas. Finally the Nuremberg trials worked as a kind ofgeneral absolution from the outside.“Rebuilding” became the slogan and stimulus of the

times. As early as 1948, in the Frankfurter Hefte, WalterDirks pointed out how treacherous this word, increasinglyinterpreted as restoring the old order, could be. Anyonewho spoke up for a new social and cultural structurerather than rebuilding the old state of things was unwit-tingly placed on the fringes of Wirtschaftswunder society,which was forming early. No wonder that a large numberof cultural initiatives, particularly non-conformist news-papers and publishing houses, had to give up.

2But one small group preparing around 1950 to find anew kind of higher educational establishment in Ulm onthe Danube, managed to make a success of it. Inge Scholland Otl Aicher had found out how great was the needfor a new cultural direction in their work at the Volk-shochschule in Ulm. With their friends they drew up aprogramme for a school of design on socio-political lines.Their educational concept combined an anti-fascist atti-tude with democratic hope. Graphics were to becomesocial communication, and product design was toencourage humanization of everyday life. After a number

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of difficulties, especially in terms of finance, teachingstarted at the Hochschule für Gestaltung (HfG) in sum-mer 1953. Two years later it moved into its own building,designed by Max Bill, on the Kuhberg in Ulm. The HfGwanted to work as a successor of the Bauhaus from itsheights above the Danube valley, admittedly with a fun-damental difference. While the Bauhaus saw training infine art as a requirement for the design of good indus-trial form, the HfG stood for a direct, functional approachto the matter in hand. For this reason Ulm had no stu-dios for painters and sculptors and no craft workshops.In his essay “bauhaus and ulm”, which is the bio-

graphical key to the essays and lectures collected here,Otl Aicher emphasizes this distinction: “at that time inulm we had to get back to matters, to things, to prod-ucts, to the street, to the everyday, to people. we had toturn round. it was not about extending art into theeveryday world, for example, into application. it wasabout counter-art, the work of civilization, the culture ofcivilization.”This also shows the strong feelings of the man com-

ing back from the war, born in 1922, for whom “comingto terms with reality” was on the agenda, and not aconcern with pure aesthetics. Thus HfG was dominatedby the view that art was an expression of escape fromlife. But above all the intention was to keep the field ofproduct design free of artistic demands, to avoidformalism.

3Once more the German provinces became the home ofmodernity and progress. As was the case with the Bau-haus in Weimar and Dessau, a middle-sized town did notmerely offer the possibility of concentrated work. Therestricted nature of the milieu, along with local reserva-tions and animosity, were particular factors in compellingHfG to explain and justify its practice. In this tensionthey felt independent on the Kuhberg – and they reallywere independent. The Geschwister-Scholl Foundation asan independent source of finance guaranteed a relativelylarge distance from the state, and the school’s ownincome, often half its annual budget, reinforcedselfconfidence.As an institution, HfG was a dwarf, but its influence

was felt world-wide. What drew students from 49nations to Ulm? Certainly the advanced syllabus, with thesocial dimensions of design at its centre, and also its

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educational aims, including training in argument andeducation that went beyond the subject rather thanbeing specific to it. Admittedly it was essential for thesuccess of HfG that the pioneering spirit of the foundersrubbed off on teachers and students. There was a hint ofthe Messianic in the commitment to building up a newindustrial culture: from product design and individualcommunication via information systems to serial building.Technology and science were to put into effect thisforward-looking design of everyday culture.In the conservative cultural climate of post-war West

German society, HfG was a creative island. It held its ownuntil 1968 as an experimental institution at a time whenelections were won with the slogan “no experiments”. Ittaught social and cultural responsibility with a view tothe future precisely at the time when the universitieswere reactivating the bourgeois, museum-style canon ofeducation. Faced with the “thousand-year fug” and theplushy cosiness of the economically successful republic,Ulm was looking for practical ways towards enlighten-ment, criticism and authenticity. In this way the outlinesof a functional, democratic culture of things, open to theworld, grew up in the midst of West German “neo-Biedermeier”.HfG itself and also the devices, corporate images,

printed items and building systems developed there wereperceived as evidence of a “different Germany” in countr-ies abroad that were as suspicious as they always hadbeen. The lack of frills, indeed the austerity of the objectsand designs showed a farewell to the “clear being”. Likethe German pavilion by Egon Eiermann and Sep Ruf forthe 1958 World Fair in Brussels, the Ulm creations wereconvincing because of the unity of technology, function-ality and aesthetics.If there was one person who could fundamentally

make his mark on the development of HfG as a teacherand model it was Otl Aicher. He represented personalcontinuity from the preparatory phase onwards, but alsogot his way in the two great clashes: the question ofwhether art should be part of the syllabus, which wasdecided against, leading to the departure of Max Bill in1957, and in the early sixties in the dispute between“theoreticians” and “practitioners”. Aicher took the prior-ity of practical work for granted. In 1963 he inveighedsharply against “uncritical faith in academic theory withits inflated tendency to analysis and increasing impotencein terms of doing”.

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4No master without an apprenticeship: HfG was an out-standing school for its teachers as well, perhaps for themin particular. Otl Aicher explained and sharpened up hisview of a realism that was not untypical of the early six-ties in conflicts between theory and practice that werebuilt into the programme. Martin Walser wrote at thetime, for example: “As this realism is not an arbitraryinvention, but simply a long overdue way of looking atand presenting things, one can say that it will make pos-sible a further step towards overcoming ideabased, ideal-istic, ideological approaches.” What Walser hoped forliterature became Aicher’s maxim for the correct use ofthings.Aicher always retained his optimism about affecting

the shape of the world, which was a motive force behindthe whole of HfG. But his opposition to a belief in anability to plan circumstances also goes back to his Ulmexperiences. Today Aicher is clear that large-scale socialand economic planning using technical processes andscientific perceptions as instruments, is an invalid meansof humanizing the world. However efficient individualareas may be, they actually accelerate the breakdown ofsocial ties and devastation of the planet to the point ofendangering the fundamentals of human existence. Asman has increasingly made the world into an artefact hisinability to control development has grown. Because theproduction of things follows abstract rules, they subju-gate the living world.For this reason Aicher campaigns for a radical return

to consideration of the individual. Instead of trustinggovernments, economic powers or spiritual courts ofappeal, people should develop a need “to live accordingto their own ideas, to carry out work determined by theirown notions, to proceed according to their own con-cepts”. Only then will they not be controlled by circum-stances, but shape their own lives. Activity based on suchreflections designs things on the criterion of their useand not in expectation of abstract exchange values. Thecorrectness of the design emerges from whether theresult is appropriate to the task examined from all sides.The question why is replaced by the question for whatpurpose. Purpose has to be tested for meaning.This concrete utopia lies behind more than forty years

of Aicher’s activity as a designer of posters, sign systems,books, exhibitions, corporate images and his own type-face. In his confrontation with work from industry, ser-vices businesses and the media he has developed a design

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principle that is fundamentally different from design in thepopular sense. For him design is precisely not surfacedesign or the production of visual stimuli. This means thatPost-Modernism with its borrowings from art and fashionis a regression into randomness and waste. Its formalismfollows the cult of the superfluous and it is not for noth-ing that is reaches its peak in the “useful object that canno longer be used”. A need to assert validity has supresseduse: styling instead of design.

5Design means relating thinking and doing. Aestheticswithout ethics tend towards deception. It is about theproduct as a whole, not just about its outward form. Thecriterion of use also includes social and ecologicaleffects: “design relates to the cultural condition of anepoch, of the period, of the world. the modern world isdefined by its design condition. modern civilization is onethat is made by man, and therefore designed. the qualityof the designs is the quality of the world.”Design of this kind requires appropriate partners. In his

insider’s view of doing things, Aicher also cites institu-tional reasons for why not every person giving a com-mission is suitable. Firstly original design requirescomplete commitment from all involved. It then needsthe culture of the “round-table” at which businessmen,engineers and designers consult each other. Becausesmall and medium-sized businesses are manageable andtheir structures less alienated, they are most suited forthe emergence of original design. Aicher: “design is thelife process of a business, when intentions should con-cretize into facts and phenomena. it is the centre ofbusiness culture, of innovative and creative concern withthe purpose of the business.”Otl Aicher calls places like this, where there has been

successful cooperation, “workshops”. They are not usedfor planning and administration, but for development anddesign. The design is guided towards the right result in aprocess of examination and correction. The principle ofguidance by alternatives permits an exemplary start insomething that already exists. Models of a “world asdesign” come into being.Otl Aicher’s writings are explorations of that world.

They are a substantive part of his work. In movingthrough the history of thought and design, building andconstruction he assures the possibilities of arrangingexistence in a humane fashion. As ever he is concernedwith the question of the conditions needed to produce a

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civilization culture. These conditions have to be foughtfor against apparent factual or material constraints andspiritual and intellectual substitute offers.Otl Aicher has a taste for dispute. For this reason this

volume contains polemical statements on cultural andpolitical subjects as well as practical reports and histori-cal exposition. Aicher fights with productive obstinacyabove all for the renewal of Modernism, which he sayshas largely exhausted itself in aesthetic visions. He insiststhat the ordinary working day is still more importantthan “cultural sunday”. But aesthetics can still not bereduced to art: “everything concrete, everything real,relates to aesthetics. art as pure aesthetics is even indanger of distracting attention from the aesthetic needsof the real world. there is no case in which there can bedifferent aesthetic categories, a pure one and an everydayone. in moral terms we can also not distinguish betweenreligious morality and the morality of every day.”Design as a way of life instead of cosmetic design: Otl

Aicher trusts training of the senses. His life’s work guar-antees the fact that this trust remains modern.

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intelligent building

modern architecture is based on a programme of socialreform. its intention, so it was said, was to bring light, airand sun into every home. people were opposed to darkstreet gorges, back-yard architecture and bourgeoiswindows with so many layers of curtains that the roomswere in semi-darkness.le corbusier’s pavillon suisse in paris in 1930-32

clearly set out the counter-position. its entire south sideconsists of a glass façade, of large windows reachingfrom floor to ceiling and occupying the full width of therooms behind it. my first visit to paris, shortly after thewar, was to see this building supported by a very fewcentral piers. i sensed that this architecture was pro-claiming a new age.there was one disappointment still to come. in the

rooms behind the windows the air was warmed up fartoo much by the sun and had become stuffy. it was toobright to work in when the sun was shining. everythingwas light and shade, there were no transitions.on the basis of this experience le corbusier later added

a brise-soleil to his buildings, protruding concrete sunshades,intended to let light, but not direct sunlight into the interior.but the view out of the windows seemed to be enclosed inblinkers.mies van der rohe’s farnsworth house also fell victim

to an ideology. it consists of glass panes reaching fromfloor to ceiling. the light and shade are controlled bycurtains. but interior curtains produce a great deal ofaccumulated heat, which can only be tackled with enor-mous air conditioning plants.anyone who knows the desert knows that the southern

sun can be a murderous enemy, like the biting cold ofthe north. an enlightened, time-conscious denizen of thenorth wears shorts in the desert and a short-sleevedshirt. the experienced camel nomad wears a robe reach-ing to his feet and also covers his face and head with acloth. and this is not because he is losing his sense ofnudism. we each have a different relationship with thesun, according to where we live. and it makes sense thateven prehistoric settlements in italy had narrow alleywaysand tall houses, to create shade. narrowness is not justan evil. it can be intentional.the northern house is a thick-walled climate castle

with incised, rather small windows. this encouragesawareness of a dualist world. in terms of insulation

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technique this is a successful solution, but probably onlyin this respect. was it good to divide the world intostrange and one’s own, into object and subject, into out-side and inside?in contrast a japanese house is a house without

dividing walls to the outside. inner world and outerworld are one. whether it rains or the sun shines, thehouse guarantees movement to and fro between houseand nature. on the dividing line there is a fluid transi-tion in the form of a surrounding, raised balcony undera broadly protruding roof. if it is necessary to close thehouse up because of heat, light or people looking in,paper-thin screens are used. this is the basis of aunique way of perceiving and seeing the world, a per-sonal interpretation of what there is. for example, itbecame part of zen philosophy, with a particular under-standing of dialectic and polarity. for the west there isalways the highest, the unique, the only truth, thesupreme being, the primeval force, the world formula bywhich everything can be explained, the state as thecrown of society. in japan reconciliation predominates,the balance of opposites. the art of allowing diversity todevelop predominates. the traditional japanese house isopen from the inside outwards and from the outsideinwards. it takes and gives. it is transparent.obviously the old masters of modern building had

something similar in mind, a dissolution of the divisionbetween inside and outside, when they started to real-ize façades as glass walls. but at first there were onlyideological solutions, and none that were also techni-cally and physiologically satisfying. windows as apotentially intelligent solution appear in embryo and assuccessful solutions to parts of the problem, but not yetas a satisfying whole. in individual cases there is idealprotection from the sun, like variable awnings, there arewonderful opening systems for sliding, tilting or swingwindows, there are adjustable slatted blinds that can beraised as sight screens, and also as protection from thesun if they are outside. we still do not have the windowfaçade as a totally variable system for all window func-tions to this day. there are only initial attempts. theneed to abolish the gulf between outside and inside hasbeen recognized.but let us assume that we want a space that is open

to the outside in the sense of a world feeling of trans-parency, in the sense of a philosophy of interconnectionand balance. the borderline, the window façade cannotbe a façade of large shop window panes as in the work

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of mies van der rohe. it is a highly complex structure thathas to do justice to a wide variety of requirements. itwould almost have to be a machine.three parameters have to be fulfilled. first, this struc-

ture must be flexible enough to let sunlight into thespace and also protect it from the direct rays of the sun.then there has to be screening. sometimes you might notwant to be overlooked, sometimes you might want to seethe full panorama outside. human activities assume dif-ferent levels of intimacy. this means that light itself, evenwhen it is raining, should be subject to control. it’s notjust the person who likes a lunchtime nap during the day,people who are working should be able to alter and con-trol light as a stimulus to work. slatted blinds, corre-sponding to the bamboo rolls of the far east, are almostideal for this. the only thing is that light control must beseparated from the provision of shade, otherwise conflictsoccur. if you have only one slatted blind or one extendedsunshade or one awning to control, clashes occur if atthe same time you require an open view but shade fromthe sun, or an open sky, but protection from being over-looked. if i use a slatted blind to make shade, i can’t lookout any more, if i use it to prevent being overlooked i donot have any unbroken light.a window façade as an operational object affords both

protection from the sun, ideally from outside, so thatthere is no accumulation of heat, and also protectionfrom being overlooked, ideally also suitable for varyingthe interior quality of light, from dark or half-dark viasubdued to full light.if one thinks of controlling light with slatted blinds,

two zones should be used from the point of view ofheight: one up to door height and one closer to the ceil-ing. these zones should be open to variable control byseparate blinds. protection against being overlooked issufficient to door height, above that you may wantthings completely open from time to time.sensitive activities, like designing or writing, require

light qualities that can be controlled. to this extent thevarious layers of curtaining in middleclass drawing rooms,including brocade curtains producing complete darkness,were not a show of pomp. people were in a position toregulate the light in the room in accordance with lightmoods in the course of the day. this can be done bettertoday. we are becoming increasingly aware of the factthat light, like air, has a broad spectrum of qualities.different countries even have different light. the lightof greece has always been recognized as having

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a specific quality. it is different from the light of irelandor egypt. the lighting scenario in a forest also gives us anidea, especially in the differentiated play of light andshade, that light does not equal light. and morning has adifferent light from midday or evening. awareness of lightis growing, and with this the need to control it.the third parameter is ventilation. fundamentally a

room without windows that can be opened is a physio-logical cage. air from an air-conditioning system is likeair from a tin. air is a high-quality stimulus factor. anairconditioning system can never produce the fresh, tin-gling air of rain in the country or the dry working air ofa summer morning or the soft air of an august evening.it would be ideal if the whole window façade could beopened, either on to the garden or, if you live in a higherstorey, out on to a balcony or a terrace. for this you needfolding doors. often wings opening above the height ofthe parapet are enough. but wherever possible openingwindows should go right down to the floor. the spacebecomes freer, outside and inside can correspond better,even if you don’t have a balcony or a terrace outside thewindow façade. even in new york the window reachingfrom the ceiling to the floor is legitimate. even when itdoesn’t have opening wings the size of doors. then youjust have normal-sized opening windows. even in thecase of very tall skyscrapers where extreme wind condi-tions can occur and people are inclined not to tolerateany opening windows at all, i would not go without atleast a few, to make me aware of air as a fluid.even if windows are kept closed for reasons of tem-

perature people want ventilation that can be adjusted byusing window vents. it must be open to sensitive regula-tion in bedrooms, for instance. anyone who sleeps veryawarely has his cult of ventilation regulations accordingto climate and season. even in cold weather he needs anopening, even if it may be only a tiny slit to freshen upthe air he breathes. the zone between door height andceiling is best suited for regulation of this kind. as todayeven middlerange cars have electric windows, it shouldbe possible to devise technical equipment that wouldensure suitable variability for both tilting and slidingwindows. this technical comfort must also be right forslatted blinds. it is not a good sign of technical civiliza-tion if control technology is to be found only in theworld of industrial work or on the dashboard of a car.this technology would not have to deliver more than

was done by hand in a traditonal japanese house, andthat is to provide complete flexibility as far as protection

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from the sun, protection from light and ventilation areconcerned, but today an approach in the direction ofmaking the window façade into a three-sector aggregateis no longer excessive.seen in this way, the window façade changes from a

two-dimensional pane into a three-zoned apparatusstaggered in terms of depth. outside is protection fromlight and sun, that can be completely withdrawn, butalso guarantees protection from direct sunlight.for reasons of insulation technology the actual win-

dow façade is a multilayered structure to protectagainst cold, but against heat as well. integrated into itare opening mechanisms for tilting, sliding or wingopenings.a third zone within the space houses light protection

and light quality and light intensity controls. the divisionof this zone must guarantee that individual windows ordoors can be opened without having to move somethinglike a closed sight protection device upwards or to theside.the apparatus produced for this will contain numerous

mini electric motors, like a car, justifying a little controlconsole of their own. building technology is far fromadvanced in this respect. there are already programmeconsoles for artificial light that control when where andwhich lights should go on and off. daylight and ventila-tion of the space present even more justification for asimilar effort.as i have said, i do not yet know a working example of

a window façade of this kind, to say nothing of theappropriate control devices, but starts have been madeon individual items.if one considers the high standard of insulation tech-

nology today, it is possible to achieve the status of thejapanese house even in colder climates and neverthelessbe able to tuck oneself away, as in the traditional west-ern house.while architecture is concerning itself with problems of

this kind it is possible to talk about intelligent architec-ture. this as a kind of counterposition to so-called mod-ern architecture. modernism was ideological but notintelligent. the cry for light, air and sun was interpretedformalistically rather than technically after the first worldwar, when this architecture came into being. the onething the living machine was not was a living machine.the 19th century had established technical architecturewith its engineering buildings. with the so-calledmodern architecture of the 20s an attempt was made to

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work more in terms of art, to combine technology withaesthetic doctrines like that of circle, triangle and square.this architecture was still familiar with the bourgeoisrequirement of autonomous art, superordinate laws ofpure aesthetics. thus it also saw technology more aes-thetically, as a new freedom to fulfil old needs with newmeans and new materials. buildings had to look like pic-tures by piet mondrian or amédée ozenfant. they had tobe cubes like suprematist art. flat roofs were an aestheticrequirement.seen in this light the hour in which intelligent archi-

tecture was born was norman foster’s sainsbury centre,which curves a flat roof just enough to allow the rain torun off.our much-praised post-modern architecture on the

other hand, which only concerns itself with window divi-sions and bars in the spirit of mackintosh’s aesthetics, isregression to naïve formalist playing around. an architectlike oswald mathias ungers reduces the problem of thewindow to pure bar distribution. the distance from solu-tions that are physiologically and technically satisfyinghas increased again. if you go into one of the fashionableglass spaces you are often flung back by the enclosed airand greenhouse atmosphere. glass and frameworks are in,the dernier cri of fashion. controlling the climate insidewon’t bother architecture. lighting technicians, air-conditioning experts and heating engineers are there todo that. the architect slips away from it all into therealm of beauty.and so we are still waiting for more humane, intelli-

gent building, that finally distances itself from glossingthings over, priggish handwriting and gestures that aremerely pretty. the architecture we need today has still tocome. for it technology is an instrument, not just astorehouse of up-to-date aesthetic structures.

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my workspace does not yet exist

i know what a kitchen should look like. i have written abook about it. but i am only slowly becoming aware whatmy workspace should look like. so far architecture hasonly provided general spaces for work, well lit, well ven-tilated, big spaces, small spaces, but no specific spaces.i know a specific working space from my own neigh-

bourhood. it is an old mill, now an inn. the entire millwas a large space with built-in galleries fitting into theoverall space as mezzanines. sacks of corn used to bebrought up by lift. then the corn went through variousworking stages of threshing and cleaning to the mill-stone, and finally, in the form of flour, down into thewaiting flour sack, which itself was also at a height thatmeant it could be easily loaded on to a cart.the miller had to have comfortable access to every

piece of apparatus for the vertically arranged workingstages, and this produced a tissue of platforms and gal-leries placed in the larger space like bridges and pulpits.the mill produced a sense of space that has only been

found since in accommodation by le corbusier. it is won-derful to live in a space in which you can look up anddown as well as out.large libraries sometimes have similar galleries and

bridges and separate workspaces within the overall space,which make it possible to be within a whole and yet tohave an individual, separate workspace.in office buildings by richard rogers and norman foster

similar working landscapes embracing several storeyshave come into being, usually grouped around an internalhall, and allowing individual working zones within awhole. they have none of the features of the many-sto-reyed large-scale offices that i hate, in which you canonly see beyond the dividing walls to a little bit left overbelow the ceiling, which seems to be far too low, even ifit is high. in the distance there are sliced windows. in thecorners there are rubber plants. the howling end ofmodernism.i work only in large-scale offices, seen in a working

technical sense. my profession requires me to work withother people. and so i want to be in the same room asthem. anyone is permitted to see and hear what i amdoing. this is the only way to produce the correct net-work of work and workers. i want to be in sight ofthem and not to have to open and close doors to get tothem.

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everything is there for everyone, and everybody workswith everybody else. the only thing that can be respon-sible for the crack-brained idea of creating individualspaces for everyone and everything is the inferioritycomplex of officialdom, afraid of a hierarchy of scrutiny.with the exceptions of toilets and darkrooms i cannot

think of a single room that absolutely has to be separate.a separate room for talking about money and personalmatters will not be needed in our offices. even if it maybe understandable that there is one for this purpose. andwhy shouldn’t my colleagues be aware that i am cursingon the telephone or being especially forthcoming withsomebody? there is no secret that may not be known byeveryone. i presume that this is the secret of a sociallyand psychologically intact place of work. when work-spaces start to be split up and sealed off then squabblingand bickering begin, privilege, prestige, hierarchy, power,authority. the result is a working world that functionsaccording to the principle of regulation, according to theprinciple of the military and the state.but if you want to work in an open working landscape

you are faced with real problems. for example people liketo have a sense of their own working space, indeed theirown working niche that allows them to think as an indi-vidual as well, to write, to design and to dream.i myself have three quite different spheres of activity. i

am in charge of an office. this means that i have to holdconversations, either at my colleagues’ workplaces, ormine, or around a larger table if several people areinvolved in the same conversation. i am an entrepreneur.this means that i do business. i usually work this outwith my secretary, who is responsible for businessarrangements. she keeps a record of my appointments,deals with telephone calls and handles correspondence.her working apparatus is telephone, computer and writ-ing equipment. we even need to be able to see eachother. if i hear that yet another journalist wants aninterview or to make a film or someone is trying to booka lecture, all to feed a stultified information society, thena wink has to be enough to help her to give the rightanswer. it’s just possible that tom wolfe might be makingan appointment.if i want to get on with my own work i don’t want to

be disturbed by every telephone call and everything thefax machine spits out. my secretary keeps an eye on this,usually by eye contact. if it is at all possible i avoidspeaking to her on the telephone. she would bother meby ringing all day long, i should have to keep picking up

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and putting down the receiver, when a small gesture thatshe can see says everything. additionally i always havequestions to ask her. and i don’t want to telephone or tohave to open a door for that either.telecommunications have made business easier in

many ways, but i would be a slave to them if i were toabandon myself up to them completely, as they do nottake account of what i am doing at any particularmoment. my secretary protects my creative powersagainst the pathological desire of new technology to beable to get hold of everybody anywhere and at any time.we must have the right to protect ourselves againstprogress as well.finally, and this is my third sphere of activity, i

am also a designer. i draft, think, draw, write, read,phantasize, develop ideas, reject them and look fornew solutions.a work-place for this must have something of the

monk’s cell about it. a great deal is pure meditation orconcentrating on being stimulated. but at the same timemy monk’s cell would have to have something of theviennese café about it, in which a man of letters fabri-cates a text in the middle of the bustle of the city. thegreatest concentration often requires the stimulus ofbeing busy, the internal needs the noise of the external.not always. but the enclosed cell is good only if it has anexit to a garden and a cloister.for me a space in which creative work is possible is

not an enclosed space. it can be created by a bookcase oreven a lighting track in a room combined with a storageshelf. we have designed such room dividers, principally tocreate psychological structuring to produce a more pri-vate work-place.an office like ours is a complexly structured thinking

workshop. we are a combination of control centre, postoffice, university institute, monastery and small printingworks. this jumble could be better structured spatially,broken up, without breaking or cutting communications.today i can only imagine an architecture appropriate tothis on two levels. a single office on two levels, at leasttwo levels.i was not a little surprised when making studies for

office organization of this kind to come across a projectby norman foster in which he has foreseen offices likethis on two levels: a large space extending over twofloors, in which a bridge area had been fitted.the bridge, fixed free in a two-storey space, is for me

the space for thinking, the place for phantasizing,

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playing, living and working in space, bathing in thedimension of intelligence.i like looking from the organ gallery into the nave of a

church, from a bridge into the docks, from a tree into ameadow. the circle, not the front row is my favouriteplace in the theatre. the captain works on a bridge abovethe ship. on the ground or on an office floor you work intwo dimensions. a bridge raises us into a consciousnessthat is richer by an extra dimension. this is the dimensionof outlooks and broad views.a bridge in my office would be a light, articulated

platform in the space with several work-places for allcreatice activities and all colleagues whose principalactivity is thinking. here people search, write and sketch.any drawing produced here is a sketch, it is executed andperfected on the drawing board or the plotter, on thefloor below.the ideas formulated here are hand-written. they are

carried out and edited on the floor below. up here thetelephone buzzes rather than rings. there are books uphere, but only those that are needed for work in hand,the library is down below. the secretaries are down belowas well, in visual contact.one of my greatest discoveries in the last few years is

the pencil. the longer and the more i work with a com-puter the more i discover a new world, the world of thepencil.in our day the computer has produced two classes of

people that are strictly separate. some people work withcomputers and do what their programmes suggest. theysit casually in front of the monitor, key in a questionand wait to see what the monitor says. usually thisinvolves an instruction about what key to press next inorder to get any further. this continues until you arriveat a result.this is the way that bankers and production engineers,

but also professors in institutes work.the other class are based at the other side of the

computer. they work in pencil. they are allowed to draft,think, phantasize, enquire, ask questions and sketch outpossible answers. this class does not work in a digitalworld, its members live in an analogous world of things,images, links, thought landscapes and they move as freelyas the owl of minerva. they are content with a pencil.their achievement is to formulate a sentence, not itscommunicative processing. it can be written by hand.their achievement is finding an idea. it can be capturedin sketches. it does not have to be captured in a fair

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copy of the kind necessary for production. they concernthemselves with concepts, programmes, drafts, they checkand reject on the basis of evaluations of which a com-puter is not capable. they operate in a free landscape ofquestions, openness and outlooks, and they examineproblems, cases, possible solutions. a piece of paper and apencil are sufficient for this.of course they provide feedback for the class of exec-

utors, realizers, statisticians, those who prepare and assessproduction, the people in front of the monitors. but theycannot work to a programme. their advantage and alsotheir destination, their use, is to be free. because withoutthem the computer would run out of programmes.is the new office an image of this two-class society?

are there thinkers and doers on the upper level and ser-vants of the service sector, the stokers of the informationsociety, employees of the computer and administrators ofautomation on the lower level?a cynical picture.but perhaps my office is also a bridge over the gulf

that divides the two classes. perhaps there are only a fewspiral staircases from the upper level to the lower. but weare all working in the same space. as well as a horizontalstructure for the office there is also a vertical one. thoseon the upper level are dependent on what people dobelow, they see each other, they talk to each other, ver-tically as well. and the people below see what the peopleabove are doing. they move up and down.i think that architecture can contribute in its way to

healing the diseases of our times. it needs transparencyinstead of division, association with colleagues ratherthan isolation.but architecture also has to structure the

undifferentiated, structure the unit organization. inarchitecture consciousness becomes concrete. the condi-tion of the times is demonstrated in built form.my office is a three-dimensional garden with various

levels, separate workplaces. the dividing walls have fallen.the various activities take place on various platforms. butthe space is an open structure. you can see the peopleyou want to see and hear the people you want to hear.general and public things take place on the lower level.here there are drawing tables, desks, telephones andcomputers. special things develop on a higher level. herethere are ordinary tables, pencils are enough. there arebooks, everything that you need for thinking.

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