The Dutch company decided to celebrate its ninety-year history by projecting its work towards the centenary with an exhibition and conference analysing the future. The concepts it has consistently pursued over the years are simple geometric form, a sense of need in detail, modularity and versatility created with flexible systems and durability. Luigi Spinelli has been to Utrecht.

Ever more specialised spaces have been added over the years around the first workshop of the Utrechtsche Machinale Stoel en Muebelfabriek (UMS) factory, founded by Frits Loeb in 1913; the workshop is now a hospitality area offering refreshments to guests. A bas-relief on the factory wall illustrates the various stages of the work process, and the collection pieces that have marked the main phases in Pastoe’s evolution in time are arranged on an upper floor of the showroom.

Remaining from the first phase, from foundation to 1943, are, among others, pieces of furniture by Dirk Lubertus Braakman, who has worked with Loeb since 1915, and the prototype of A. K. Grimmon’s chest of drawers, dating from 1932. In the 1920s, the company started to work with outside designers from the schools in Amsterdam and The Hague, under the control of the internal technical office that verifies commercial strategies. Responding to a demand for furnishings devoid of needless decoration and tending – albeit still cautiously – towards a modern design, the company developed rapidly and immediately broadened its market.

The next phase commenced with the post-war recovery and brought new machinery and a new name, PAS-toe (the meaning of the French word passe-partout). This phase was principally marked by the figure of Braakman’s son, who led the design group until 1978, bringing a surge of renewal thanks to technological acquisitions – e.g. the hot bending of plywood – and concepts learnt overseas with Herman Miller and the Eames. Cees Braakman’s pencil produced the “Oak” and “Birch” series (1948-50) in bent plywood, the “Berken Bergmeubel” three-door storage unit (1951) and most of all, in 1955, the revolutionary “Pastoe-Meubeln-naar-maat” (Made-to-Measure) system; adopting a new 4-way corner joint - the “hoeklijst” designed by Johannes Antonius Bus, who was awarded the silver medal in 1957 at the XI Triennale in Milan – this produced a dozen or so possible final versions.

The main stages in the contemporary phase featured pieces that have made the history of interior design: the vertical “A’dammer” shutter furniture, designed in 1978 by Aldo van den Nieuwelaar, which a good twenty-five years later brought the “Fibre J10711” by Klaus Vogt, with the evolution of using polypropylene for the shutter; the modular “Vision V241” wall-unit system by Pierre Mazairac and Karel Boonzaaijer (1985), based on the “Pastoe Cube”; the metal seats and umbrella stands designed by Shiro Kuramata in the same year; and a number of modular storage units – “Base” and “Matrix U50” – which in the late 1990s marked the beginning of collaboration with the Japanese interior architect Shigeru Uchida and, at the same time, offered continuity with the memorable “U+N” range, given over to minimalism. In 1999, Uchida produced a seat in padded metal section called “Box R122”, the already famous “Horizontals B03” range of wall units in oak, featuring an invisible suspension system peculiar to Pastoe, and the “Slide P10” series, with numerous inside function options. In both these series, the theme of the project lies in the horizontal lines and sliding movement of the doors.

The “Nu / 90 Jaar Pastoe” exhibition, held in September and October at the Post CM – events section opposite the Centraal Museum – focused on a number of rooms in sequence devoted to the various components of the Pastoe philosophy. For the design, the curators, Gert Staal, Guus Beumer and Peter Zeegers, chose a selection of drawings, photographs and catalogues from the Pastoe archives, a layout of the “High Noon (From Here To Eternity)” project by Johannes Schwartz, with pieces in scale from the “Vision” series, work done with Philips on a simple and “uncompromising” home-video and with Sikkens, a collection of vessels in various sizes - plates, vases and glasses in fine white porcelain - designed for Pastoe by Piet Stockmans and the wood and rice-paper cube for the tea ceremony proposed by Shigeru Uchida for “Essere e Benessere” at the Milan Triennale in 2002.

Before the exhibition was inaugurated, a conference entitled “Look Forward 10 Years” was held inside the Nicolikerk. It stressed the importance of continuity and reappraisal in the face of evolving tastes and markets, and of social developments. Harm Scheltens, the enthusiastic managing director of Pastoe since 1984 who opened the works, invited all those involved in the success of a piece of furniture to the discussion. The debate was led by Ida van Zijl, applied arts historian and managing director of the Centraal Museum, who spoke of Pastoe’s particular philosophy and presented the speakers.

Jan Vorstenbosch, a philosopher and theoretician of household appliances, raised the problem of how everyday life can be changed and organised by the objects used and interiors that reflect today’s phase. Vorstenbosch spoke of the philosophical aspects and structures underlying this question, the meaning of design objects that enter our homes and the expanded sphere of dimensions they take on in the human existence. Paul Mijksenaar, lecturer in visual information design at the TU in Delft, retraced the communicational aspects of design from the 1920s, in an evolution that has led from mass production to the use of pictograms, then electronics right up to the Internet, and the role played by architects in this process.

Winy Maas, an architect with MVRDV, developed his thoughts on the next ten years via projects completed or being studied, tracing them back to general models. On the subject of acoustics he showed Villa VPRO in Hilversum; on that of green space, the Maxima Medical Centre in Veldhoven; reflections on the urban landscape referred to the studies for the Public Library in Spijkenisse, and for new atelier in Amsterdam. New residential models are seen in the Hagen Island settlement in The Hague, the 100 Wozocos residential buildings and the Borneo Houses in Amsterdam; buildings in which climate comes into strong play with the project are the Matsudai Cultural Centre and the Silodam in Amsterdam. He ended with the interesting proposal to programme and combine project parameters as in information technology in the “Function mixer” studies for Habiform Gonda.

Stefano Marzano, director of Philips Design, reflecting on a development process that “has passed from externalisation (from the stone to the aeroplane) to a process of re-internalisation (digital techniques, microchips)” took stock of a strategy that can develop in three directions: focus on maintaining authenticity; look beyond the present situation and the current markets; build alliances to develop new markets. He also went over the stages in the cultural reflection that Philips has followed for years, with events such as “Vision of the Future” (1995), “La casa prossima futura” (1999) and “New Nomads” (2001).

https://www.pastoe.nl
https://www.centraalmuseum.nl