manufacturerr: Braun

design: Hans Gugelot 1956

 

 

Radio-plus-record-player combinations were for a long time the industry’s top product, usually in the form of corpulent “music chests”. The SK 4 provided a striking alternative, using materials that were utterly out of place in the middle-class living room: the metal housing and Plexiglas cover that would become standard over the next few decades. It was one of the first phonographs that did not try to hide its purpose by pretending to be a normal piece of furniture, but instead highlighted it. Further breaks with tradition can be found in its compact boxy form and a minimalism that was tantamount to culture shock. The application of the Bauhaus principles to a modern industrial product celebrates its premiere in this design. The same dissolution into constituent parts to which chairs were subjected in the early 20th century was now transposed onto a phonograph. The scale typography used followed Otl Aicher’s specifications. The record player itself with its somewhat softer forms came from the drawing board of Wilhelm Wagenfeld. Hans Gugelot had the idea of using a U-shaped piece of metal for the housing. This product was therefore a joint effort. The structurally necessary contrast between the white apparatus block and the side panels of reddish elmwood was perceived at the time as giving the whole a desirable Scandinavian look. The ventilation slits likewise came out of Gugelot’s stock of forms, reminiscent of rows of windows. Since they were almost identical in the front and back, the device did not have an unsightly rear view that had to be hidden. The Phonosuper thus fulfilled another criterion for modern furnishing concepts as an object that could be placed in the middle of a room and enjoyed from all sides. It’s no surprise that this item soon became one of the architects’ favourite props, perfectly corresponding as it does with its sober straight lines with those blocks of stone, steel and glass that the post-war master builders were just in the process of erecting on the bombed-out plots of German cities.