Kronberg, a small town just outside Frankfurt, where the great Dieter Rams, 72 year old, lives. All around, a green countryside and big paddle wheels for the production of wind power, as it seems. A different landscape from Milan’s concrete jungle.
A two-hour ride to get to the old Braun village. This is how Kronberg is called because, apart from hosting the manufacturing headquarters of the German company, carpenters and managing directors used to live here. It seems to be in a quiet corner of the world.
The houses are typical mountain homes: sloping roofs and wooden facades, painted with bright colours.
Every house has a garden and almost in every garden there is an apple tree and children toys all around.
Dieter Rams' home lays on a hilltop, in a residential district next to a wood full of blackberries.
The white-haired man who opens the door is the designer.
His home looks like a museum for his own objects. Maybe Dieter Rams is one of the few designers who can live among his own creations. He says that is the only way to understand their limits.
His studio: a large white room facing a little Japanese garden.
One wall is entirely covered with his famous bookshelves, the 606, full of books and architecture magazines.
On the other wall stands the first wall hi-fi, obviously designed by him and manufactured by Braun. It is over 40 years old but yet it works perfectly.
Rams talks about design, or better, about “good design”.
He tells us how he became the owner of the famous Mies van Der Rohe's maxim “Less is more”, turning it into his own maxim “Less but better”, and how an object should be as neutral as possible. And also non-invasive. “As an English butler, always ready to help but invisible when not needed”. He often refers to objects as "honest", which is impressive. Design seems to be a matter of ethics.
He talks about his famous bookshelves, the 606. He designed it in the Sixties having in mind a fluid project, the possibility to continuously add parts without corrupting the original design. “Bookshelves should be neutral, as its life comes from books it contains”. He goes on telling that nowadays, forty years later, he sees no reason to modify the original design, maybe only to use better technologies.
He has really tested it. In fact he shows us a kitchen entirely built with 606 shelves. And in the guest room we find it in a wooden version.
He tells us about how, in the Eighties, he was contacted by Maddalena De Padova who wanted to manufacture an entirely aluminium version of the 606, and how her good technical professionals managed to solve every problem. It is not by chance that his bookshelves, light and elegant, are often displayed in the windows of her shop in corso Venezia.
But “mister Braun” has lots to tell, as he worked for forty years in the Braun company and succeeded in creating an unmistakable style: from alarm clocks to blenders.
“Entrepreneurs make the real difference: we need people who take the risks, or else we would have no innovation”.
He speaks with a bit of nostalgia about the time when at Braun’s, or at Olivetti’s, entrepreneurs used to bet on ideas and research. He remembers that the aim of these companies was to create functional objects, beautiful and accessible to the majority of people. As Charles Eames used to say.
But Rams is severe with the new designers' generation, guilty of seeking spectacular new objects, with a tendency to sensationalism just by changing a few features in the objects. He agrees with Castiglioni and Magistretti in this regard.
Rams offers us a glass of chilled wine and takes us to visit his home again. He tells us that his wife, a photographer, would have appreciated that filming was been made without the use of artificial light.
Another time: “Less but better”. It is the wonderful simplicity that counts.