Juego de asientos modulares de Otto Zapf para Vitsoe, años 70. Juego de 4

Industrial designer Otto Zapf was born into a family of cabinet makers in 1931 in Rossbach, former Czechoslovakia. In 1945, his family moved to Eschborn, near Frankfurt in Germany. Turned off carpentry from the dust and the dirt of his father’s workshop, Zapf instead decided to study mathematics and physics at Goethe University in Frankfurt. When he returned to design, Zapf used his mathematical background to enhance his office furniture designs.

He began to design professionally in 1956, jointly with Rolf Schmidt, Dieter Rams (b. 1932) and Günther Kieser (b. 1930). In 1958 he met and befriended Danish entrepreneur Niels Vitsœ (1913-1995). A year later they founded the company, Vitsœ + Zampf, producing furniture designed by Dieter Rams. Ultimately, the partnership ended with Zapf leaving the company because he was not rightly credited with the design that inspired Ram’s infamous 606 shelving unit. After Zapf left in 1969, the company became simply Vitsœ.

In 1967, Zapf designed his own collection of fiberglass desks, cabinets, bookcases, and chairs that utilized fiberglass frames and shells. The Sofallettes, Arcadia, Comudus and Calix sofas; the fully fiberglass Column Table (1967) were well received at the time. It was for his Column Floor Lamp (1968) however, that he won the “Gute Form” (Good Form) Award in 1972.

Sometime between 1970 and 1971, Zapf designed his Softline System–one of the very first fabric-based panel display systems. The design received acclaim at the Design Center in Stuttgart. Bobby Cadwallader, president of the American furniture manufacturer Knoll, hired Zapf in 1973 to create an office system based on these fabric-covered frames and Bill Stephen’s Stephens System (1971). The result was the Zapf System (1976), which promoted an entirely free and open office environment, including free standing desks, storage units, work stations and screens. This collaboration marked Knoll’s first venture into office and systems furniture. Pacific Telephone used the system for over 7,500 employees, which was the largest furniture contract in history. Soon, Zapf’s designs were in the corporate headquarters of IBM, General Motors and CBS.

A fruitful collaboration, Zapf created an array of much-lauded designs for Knoll which were—above all—user friendly, comfortable and welcoming. In 1982 the Zapf System was adapted, extended and renamed the Zapf Plus Office System, which was launched in Europe in 1985.  He continued to design for the modernist office, with the Management Office System for Vitra (1986), the Aurora Office System (1991), which took ten years to design and develop and which won the “Best of Neocon” award in Chicago, and the Marvel Zapf Office System (1999) which was also exhibited in at Neocon in Chicago.

Today, Zapf continues to design and develop new products in his studio in Germany.

British manufacturer Vitsœ (formerly the German Vitsœ+Zapf) was founded by Danish furniture dealer Niels Wiese Vitsœ and German industrial designer Otto Zapf near Frankfurt in 1959. Forbears of ecologically-driven design since its inception, the company is celebrated most for its nearly six-decade active span producing the modular furniture of legend Dieter Rams, perhaps the 20^th century’s most widely revered proselytizer of rational minimalism.

The roots of this collaboration—a side project amid Rams’s chief tenure as Braun’s Director of Design—trace back to 1957, when Rams began developing his 606 Universal Shelving System prototype in response to his growing concerns about the world’s limited supply of resources. Conceived as a series of interchangeable units of near endless adaptability, this unobtrusive and highly-functional design framed the enduring aesthetic of Vitsœ’s oeuvre, which thoughtfully followed in the “less, but better” approach, drawing inspiration from pioneering modernists like Peter Behrens and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. 

In the following years, Rams designed a number of rational and modular designs for Vitsœ; to name a few, the 620 Chair Programme (1962), which earned a Gold Medal at Vienna’s 1969 International Furniture Exhibition; and the molded plastic 621 Side Table (also 1962).

In 1970, Vitsœ+Zapf shortened the brand name to Vitsœ, following Otto Zapf’s departure; he went on to design for Knoll Inc. / Knoll International in 1973. In 1985, the company expanded into England at the behest of Mark Adams, who became Vitsœ’s managing director in 1993. Appointed to steer the firm out of financial difficulties, Adams eventually moved into Vitsœ’s sole ownership in 1995 and he moved the company’s manufacturing base from Germany to the United Kingdom, where international markets could be better served. 

The current Leamington, England-based Vitsœ has held exclusive licensing to Rams’s comprehensive furniture catalogue since January 2013, but the original versions can be found at venerable institutions such as New York’s  and London’s , among others.