Bauhaus Trilogy by FSB

Tribute to Gropius, Wagenfeld and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

15.02.19

Text: Bettina Krause, Photos: FSB

Bauhaus very much en vogue: every­one’s talking about the 1919-1933 period, years that pro­foundly altered the world of design. Bauhaus teach­ers and their dis­ci­ples set about rev­o­lu­tion­is­ing the theory and prac­tice of art, design and ar­chi­tec­ture exactly a century ago with ideas that were truly radical in part, giving rise to shapes imbued with clarity, prag­ma­tism – and time­less quality. FSB demon­strates with its Bauhaus Trilogy that getting a handle on the Bauhaus is still pos­si­ble in the most literal of senses.

FSB marks cen­te­nary by issuing a re­design of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s door lever.

The third Bauhaus di­rec­tor’s orig­i­nal door lever.

Those who lent shape to the Bauhaus phi­los­o­phy ac­corded top pri­or­ity to every detail – in­clud­ing door handles. Three of the age’s leading ex­po­nents, Walter Gropius, Wilhelm Wa­gen­feld and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, also de­signed handles. FSB has now issued its re­designs of their classic work as a Bauhaus Trilogy for 2019. The orig­i­nal blue­prints have been ju­di­ciously re-in­ter­preted and sen­si­tively re­worked to take account of modern build­ing-en­gi­neer­ing re­quire­ments.

Door lever FSB 1267 is part of the Bauhaus Trilogy – a tribute to Walter Gropius, Wilhelm Wa­gen­feld and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

Alessan­dro Mendini re­designed the famous “Gropius Handle” for FSB way back in 1986 – it trades as FSB 1102.

As of now, FSB 1102 can also be sup­plied with cut, visible fixed roses either square or round in shape.

These vari­ants come vi­su­ally closest to the orig­i­nals from the 1920s.

FSB 1102 with screw-fixed long back­plate

An orig­i­nal Gropius lever handle from the 1920s

FSB de­signer Hartmut Weise re-in­ter­preted the door lever by Wilhelm Wa­gen­feld – as FSB 1021.

FSB 1021 is now also avail­able as a pared-down plug-in handle for in­ter­nal doors.

An orig­i­nal Wa­gen­feld lever handle from the 1920s.

An orig­i­nal lever handle by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

The famous “Gropius Handle” FSB 1102 (re­designed by Alessan­dro Mendini) and the FSB 1021 model by Bauhaus dis­ci­ple Wilhelm Wa­gen­feld (re­designed by Hartmut Weise) have now become a trilogy through the ad­di­tion of lever handle FSB 1267.

The third Bauhaus di­rec­tor, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, had his own design pro­duced in a variety of forms for build­ing pro­jects in Germany from 1928 onwards.

The FSB 1267 product col­lec­tion in­cludes a model that is more than simply a replica of Mies van der Rohe’s orig­i­nal door handle, though: the new design em­bod­ies the formal thrust of its fore­bear whilst also equip­ping it for the re­quire­ments of con­tem­po­rary ar­chi­tec­ture; factors such as fire-safety ap­proval or returns to the door were not then on the agenda in the way they are today.

Italian de­signer Alessan­dro Mendini at Brakel in 1986 during the “Handle Work­shop”.

Van der Rohe de­vel­oped a number of vari­ants of his lever handle for his build­ing pro­jects, cases in point being Haus Tu­gend­hat in Brno (1930), Haus Lemke in Berlin (1932) or Farnsworth House in Illi­nois (1945-51). FSB’s in-house de­signer Hartmut Weise sifted through these many vari­ants, into all of which Mies had in­cor­po­rated a defin­ing “fore­fin­ger furrow”, and opted to use the handle for Haus Lemke as source ma­te­r­ial for his re-edi­tion.

“Mies was well aware of the close link between a ma­te­r­ial and the patina that comes with use”, Hartmut Weise ex­plains, “and he knew which styl­is­tic means to adopt in order that, instead of be­com­ing less good-look­ing through use and the wearing of edges, his models ac­tu­ally became more ‘beau­ti­ful’.”

Weise ad­dressed himself to the lever’s er­gonomic prop­er­ties – the fore­fin­ger furrow that forms the tran­si­tion on the inside of the neck or the way a rounded neck flow­ingly mutates into a flat, up­right-oval grip. The edges in his design ensure its formal idiom remains clear and precise.

Like­wise part of the Bauhaus Trilogy: a re­design of the door lever by Walter Gropius and Adolf Meyer, the FSB 1102 model.

Round­ing off the trio: FSB 1021, the re­design of a door lever by Bauhaus dis­ci­ple Wilhelm Wa­gen­feld.

The fore­fin­ger furrow, which was very pro­nounced on the orig­i­nal door lever for Haus Lemke, has been reduced to a mere notion in the re­worked model.

Its el­e­gance and great ar­tic­u­lacy make FSB 1267, now avail­able in Alu­minium, Brass and Bronze, a con­tender for classic status. This is a handle, after all, that marries as­pir­ing design to low-pro­file looks.

The trilogy breathes further life into the cap­ti­va­tion con­tin­u­ously exerted, and evo­lu­tion un­der­gone, by the Bauhaus’s design vo­cab­u­lary over the past century and pro­vides a means of lit­er­ally grasp­ing it.