As we’ve seen in earlier installments of this series, Braun revolutionized the product categories of audio entertainment, personal grooming and even time-telling. By the 1950s, they begun to expand out of the living room, the bathroom and the bedroom to transform the most crucial of household spaces: The kitchen, where every family’s sustenance was prepared. It was arguably the space where the housewives of the era, and the children they minded, spent the most time.
It was also a room for work, where design had yet to make a significant impact in easing the burden of labor. Braun’s designers tackled kitchen tasks with their characteristically superb analysis of what was needed, and how those objects should look and function. They began by introducing a host of diverse kitchen products, but it was the preparation of one hot beverage in particular—coffee—which allowed them to knock it out of the park time and again, in their relentless search of design perfection.
1957
KM 3
Gerd Alfred Muller
From the get-go, it became clear that Braun would forge their own design path in this category. The KM 3 food processor was radically different from then-dominant American mixers of the time, which followed that country’s streamlined, chrome-heavy style and often look as if they were manufactured by Chevy. The sleek, simple KM 3, in contrast, looked as if it were related to Braun’s electric razors of the era. But this was no example of trying to graft the design of one product category onto another; the smooth, largely featureless shape was easy to clean. Attesting to the successful design of the KM 3 is that it would see production, with slight modifications, for more than thirty years.
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