Clothes Rack, Spirale,

1989

After training as jewelry and appliance designers at the Schule für Gestaltung Zürich, Christoph Dietlicher (b. 1958), Thomas Drack (1962–2017), and Andreas Giupponi (b. 1958) founded Neue Werkstatt in Winterthur in 1988. The collective’s name, which translates as “New Workshop,” reflects its design philosophy, which entails producing all the furniture, lighting, and jewelry it makes in its own metal workshop as far as possible, using elementary methods.
It is precisely this constraint that gives Neue Werkstatt products their unique look—as exemplified by the Spirale clothes rack. Despite its sparing use of material, it exhibits a surprising utilitarian playfulness. The suspended sculpture with a dramatic play of shadows is formed from nothing but a steel tube and a stainless steel wire coiled into a helix. The laconic description on the product sheet puts it in a nutshell: “Hang your hangers as you like. When it’s full, it’s full. When it’s empty, the spiral is virtually nothing.” (Sabina Tenti)