HEINZ WITTHOEFT AT 54 HEINZ WITTHOEFT AT 55 TAIL 13 A . FRAME Witthöft flicks through a Tail 13 catalogue. In the foreground is the Tail 11-50 angled table. Posters from his various exhibitions lean against the wall. Tail 14-30 armchair. Tail 14-30 table detail and Tail 5 stool. 197 Heinz Witthöft Talk TAIL 13 A . FRAME … people who are essentially your contemporaries, such as Hans Gugelot, Dieter Rams and Fritz Haller? As a student, the first designers I found interesting were Herbert Hirche and Helmut Magg. Visually, I am drawn to simple aesthetic structures like a cat is to movement. Later on I got to know the work of others, but I always wanted something different. I don’t mean to sound arrogant, but I would call myself an artist who realizes his work in a highly subjective way. If you look at my Tail 14 chair, you’ll see that it has nothing to do with design; it’s miles from anything made by Dieter Rams. His work belongs to a particular movement that was never relevant to me. But the principles behind his work, specifically his modular furniture, were theoretically geared towards giving greater freedom and flexibility to the user . . . Yes, freedom is also a major theme of mine. My early furniture systems were put together with carriage bolts, because I wanted people without much money to be able to make cheap furniture. Unfortunately, it turned out that people with little money tended to have little taste for these pieces. My furniture was often bought by more affluent people, and as it was not mass-produced, it was actually not that cheap either. Would you say that modernist principles are still valid in today’s world? I see myself as a representative of the timeless modern. It is not an invention of the past hundred years. You can see the modern aesthetic and its systematic qualities, for example, in an antique Arabian tiled floor. There comes a point when you find you have been allocated to a particular tradition. I am honoured when people categorize my work as Bauhaus or Ulm, but my work emerges from my perception and my thoughts. It has just as much to do with the fact that I grew up barefoot near the sea and felt real hunger as a child. I experienced these very elementary things at an early age, and they have influenced me the most. Is your work orientated primarily towards the user or towards your internal need for expression? I do have a strong drive to make something that is my own, but when I’m involved in a project like an office or museum interior, I come up with a solution and dedicate myself to its realization. By that I mean I implement not only my system but also myself in order to achieve a result. As I work, I disregard neither the contractor nor the user. What kinds of clients do you work for? I don’t work on just anything. I am not a service provider. I have worked on one project all my life, and I’m striving to bring it to the service of society. Have your chosen direction and your career as a Gesamtkünstler, or total Station models A, B and C made of individual ‘tails’ at a scale of 1:1000 (foreground). Architecturtaile studies for a Tail 10-30 stool (background). artist, proved difficult to follow? No. Compared with the work of most others, mine has a well-confined theme. My ‘tails’ – the building blocks I mentioned earlier – form the heart of my entire philosophy. Let me give you an example: A window ledge is a detail, but it is not really a removable detail. Each of my ‘tails’ has a relationship with the greater whole but can also be removed. This is a radical aesthetic viewpoint. Everything I do is within this context. I have created a network, or grid, and all the individual components can be arranged within it. What would be a dream project for you? What would you like to make or work on? At the moment, I would like to make scale models of my Station architecture for children to assemble. Wouldn’t you rather build the real, full-size city? If people came to me with the money to build it, I would probably say no. I’d be afraid that they’d make something out of it that I couldn’t live with. _ ‘My work is miles away from Dieter Rams’ 198 Heinz Witthöft Talk
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjQ1Mzg4OQ==