TV and phonograph manufacturer, Kronach / Bavaria

 

 

At the end of 2006, the press reported that three million euros would be paid out to the around 1,000 Loewe employees: as compensation for salaries that had been delayed in times of crisis. So this is hardly a run-of-the-mill company, but still one with a typical German story. It’s a story of technical inventions, competitive pressure from the Far East, and design. The company from the Upper Franconia region was one of those brands that emerged back when radio and television were just taking their first steps. As early as the 1930s, the Berlin company was already trying to put a television set into series production, and then in the “golden” decades after 1945 – now in a south German location – it enjoyed a meteoric rise. Loewe stood time and again for the latest technology, such as with the first portable tape player in the early 1950s and the video recorder – still with monstrous dimensions – just a decade later. In the 1980s, when Japanese manufacturers seemed to be rapidly taking the technological lead, the company once again put all its cards on innovation: with the first stereo television set, for example, the first Btx decoder series or the Multitel TV 10, which combined television and telephone and was probably too far ahead of its time. Another novelty hit the right chord, however: The Art 1 television set, designed by Alexander Neumeister, inaugurated the futuristic-looking media statue as new aesthetic type and was just as groundbreaking an accomplishment as Herbert Hirche’s model HF 1 (for Braun, k p.130) back in its day. But it was above all a milestone for Loewe itself, for the decision to employ an external designer had paid off richly. While almost every other German company in the industry was forced out of the market, the formula of design plus innovation proved to create the perfect niche. Since the late 1980s, the Phoenix Design studio has been supplying the concepts for the multimedia future found in the German living room, emulating the best Braun tradition of rational purism while pursuing a formal vocabulary as consistent as that of Apple or Bang & Olufsen. They are also responsible for introducing the centrally positioned power button, now a signature feature of Loewe products. Television and hi-fi systems such as Spheros, Xelos or Individual are dovetailed to create an integrated system, while also offering exclusive details such as a bi- directional remote control. The intelligent set-up solutions, such as the attachment of the television set to a metal pole spanned between floor and ceiling, likewise extend our entrenched media-consumption habits. The first television set that can be designed by the purchaser has been on offer since 2005 – the aptly named Individual series. There are well over 400 variations to choose from.