Light switches are one of those nondescript everyday items that neither attract much attention nor are commonly associated with design. The people at Berker see things differently. Similar to the door-handle manufacturer 
FSB, the tradition-rich company from the Sauerland region does everything it can to overcome the curse of the ordinary in a product that is only simplistic on the surface. The fact that these eff o rts are oriented strongly on classical Bauhaus Modernism surely has something to do with the company’s having been founded the same year as the famous design university in Weimar. Berker’s ascent took place in parallel to the spread of electric light in the 1920s. The turning switch common at the time was an early example of functional design for industrial products. The firm picked up again on this pioneering phase of good design at the end of the century with its retro series 1930 (-> p.82). Looking back through the models of the interceding years, it suddenly becomes evident how these control elements that we touch so many times a day have engraved themselves in our visual memory. Berker became a design-oriented brand in the 1960s. At that time, the IF jury recognized the latest rocker switch as an example of “good form” and Egon Eiermann, master builder of the high-rise for the House of Representatives in Bonn, chose the model Modul for his building. During the ensuing decade, a collaboration with the Lengyel design studio began that still continues today. This resulted not only in important contemporary product lines such as the popular S.1 p rogram and the award-winning series B.1; it was also the origin of the kind of organically developing design culture à la Braun and Wilkhahn that encompasses all elements of an enterprise. Innovative switch solutions would emerge in the process, such as the TS system by Tom Schlotfeldt, a completely new product type that has already taken on cult status. For the age of the digitized home, where all electric elements can long since be operated via central panels – but in which we still search in the dark for the good old light switch – Berker has concepts such as the minimalist interface B.IQ at the ready. In cooperative projects with Rosenthal and Swarowski, special applications using the materials of porcelain and crystal have been conceived.