In 1961, Paul Schärer Jr., the founder’s grandson, joined the company. A trained engineer, he had a taste for the modernist movement, and when it became clear that the company would need a new factory and office with far more space than its predecessor, he decided to hire one of his favorite designers, Fritz Haller, to create it.
The result? A series of low, cuboid-shaped buildings with flat roofs and glass curtain windows. As the story goes, once the office was complete, Schärer and Haller couldn’t find furniture that precisely suited their needs, so they developed what would become the Haller system. They envisioned furniture that would be easy to adapt and expand, using their patented ball joint that stably connects each piece of the furniture with minimal visible joinery. “I’ve already managed to rebuild [my pieces] into four different systems to fit my needs through the years, both at home and in my office,” says Dang, who has purchased pieces in grey, black, and ruby red all secondhand.
Though Haller and Schärer had no intention of selling the furniture, photographs of the USM offices were made public, and soon, potential clients began reaching out to order the designs for their own workspaces. The Rothschild Bank in Paris placed the first order in 1969, purchasing 600 USM workstations for their offices, and the Haller system has been available ever since.
It was several decades before the furniture would be advertised for the home in the 1990s, and it’s one possible reason why the pieces are just now experiencing their moment in the sun. USM Haller never reached domestic ubiquity stateside in the 20th century, and therefore doesn’t feel like our expected expression of midcentury-modern ideals. As classic as an Eames chair or a Knoll desk may be, they both carry stylistic baggage that USM Haller furniture doesn’t have. This isn’t furniture you’d find in the background of an episode of Mad Men. Still, for modular furniture especially, the fact that it’s been around for decades makes it feel like a prudent investment compared to some upstart. “People want to invest, but they may not want to invest in brands that are not for sure icons,” Thorson says. It’s easier to believe you’ll be able to expand your system 10 years down the road—or sell it to someone who wants to—if people have already been doing so for several decades.
USM Haller pieces in action
Mirroring the built-to-last mindset of the furniture design itself, many of the machines in the factory that make the pieces have been in use for several decades, even as newer robotics-assisted machines have been brought in. I touched just-produced, still-hot joinery and saw the panels fresh with color, slowly whirring by on a cable system overhead as they hung to dry. Workers ensured that the panels were bent properly, that the joints machines were humming along, and that the powder-coating process flowed smoothly. I was gobsmacked to think of how many decades this facility had been churning out the Haller furniture system, never outsourcing overseas for the benefit of the bottom line. Even if some of the machinery showed its age compared to the ultramodern-looking robotic machinery, the pieces being produced still looked timeless.
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