Hasta La Ideas

This Fan Man shelving unit, designed in 1977, can still be ordered from Swiss furniture manufacturer Röthlisberger today. (They’re made to order.)

Designed by the Swiss design duo of Ueli Berger and Susi Berger-Wyss, Fan Man was, like much of their work, a repudiation of modernism. The dimensions took actual human beings into account, literally: “For the first draft of the Fan Man, Ueli Berger laid himself on the floor as a model for the outlines,” read the duo’s website. “The Fan Man is still available today as a man-high shelf and as a valet with 34 compartments for books and objects.”

Fun to see that in the original sketches, the Fan Man was meant to have storage in his chest covered with Plexiglas doors:

I wonder if owners of this unit would come to associate frequently-referenced books with certain parts of the human body.