Hans Hilfiker

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Hans Hilfiker (born September 15, 1901 in Zurich ; † March 2, 1993 in Gordevio TI ) was a Swiss electrical engineer and designer.

Swiss station clock

His best-known work is the Swiss station clock . He later supplemented this clock, designed in 1944, with the second hand with the characteristic red trowel he developed. Less known, but at least as important, is his work on the development of the Swiss kitchen standard during his work for Therma AG in the 1960s. Hilfiker did not see himself as a designer until the 1940s and independently developed his design philosophy as an engineer without reference to art. He is considered one of the pioneers of Swiss industrial design .

Life

After attending primary and secondary school, Hans Hilfiker completed an apprenticeship as a precision mechanic. He studied electrical engineering and telecommunications engineering at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich .

From 1925 he worked for the Albiswerke (Siemens) in Zurich, for which he traveled to Argentina in 1926 . From 1927 to 1928 he worked for Siemens as a technical advisor to the telecommunications troops of the Argentine army. He built workshops and mobile telephone exchanges and trained telecommunications NCOs technically. In 1929 he participated as a senior engineer in the construction of the Buenos Aires - Rosario telephone line through the river and marshland of the Río Paraná . From 1930 he planned a submarine cable through the delta of the Río de la Plata from Buenos Aires to Montevideo ( Uruguay ). Siemens trained him for five months in Berlin so that he could take over an operating company to be founded in Argentina. However, the plans failed in 1931 and Hilfiker returned to Switzerland.

From 1932 to 1958 he worked for the Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) as an engineer in construction department III, from 1944 as deputy head of the construction department and head of the fixed electrical systems services . In addition to the station clock, he developed, among other things, a gantry crane for loading heavy goods from the road onto the rails for the SBB, the platform roof for the Winterthur-Grüze station , a timetable projector for the Zurich station and a service building for overhead line maintenance, which is now a listed building in the “coal triangle” of Zurich train station .

From 1958 to 1968 he was a director at Therma AG in Schwanden in the canton of Glarus ( Electrolux since 1978 ). He developed a completely new kitchen range for Therma that consisted of modules that could be combined with one another. Until then Therma had been producing stand-alone devices. With these system kitchens, he laid the foundation for his own Swiss kitchen standard SINK (Swiss Industrial Commission for the Standardization of Kitchens ), which deviates from the European one (width 55 instead of 60 cm). A prototype according to this standard was shown at the EXPO 1964 in Lausanne. Hilfiker implemented an actual corporate design for Therma and structured the production processes for the new fitted kitchens .

From 1968 to 1980, Hilfiker worked as a design consultant at Devico Design in Gockhausen near Zurich.

In addition, Hilfiker taught from 1974 to 1980 at the Windisch Technical Center .

The Grüze train station, the platform roofs of which were developed as a prototype by Hilfiker.
Swiss station clock

Works

Information from: Hans Hilfiker, engineer and designer (= Swiss Design Pioneers 1), Kunstgewerbemuseum, Zurich 1984, OCLC 12027683 .

  • 1950 SBB loading crane road-rail
  • 1951 SBB road track vehicle for overhead line maintenance
  • 1952 SBB catenary service building, Remisenstrasse 7, Zurich
  • 1952–1955 Platform roofs, Winterthur-Grüze train station
  • 1955 SBB Swiss station clock with seconds trowel
  • 1957 SBB timetable reader, Zurich train station
  • 1959 Therma heater Butterfly
  • 1962 Therma system kitchen
  • 1963–1965 Salvalarnia House, Gordevio TI

literature

  • Claude Lichtenstein in: Isabelle Rucki, Dorothea Huber: Architects Lexicon of Switzerland 19./20. Century , Birkhäuser, Basel 1998, ISBN 3-7643-5261-2 , p. 268.
  • Museum of Design Zurich : Hans Hilfiker, engineer and designer (= Swiss Design Pioneers , Volume 1), Museum of Applied Arts, Zurich 1984, OCLC 19636226 (exhibition catalog).
  • Christian Sonderegger: Between Progress and Idle: The Standardized Kitchen - Notes on the Development of the Swiss Kitchen Standard, in: The Kitchen, Living World - Use - Perspectives (= Edition Living , Volume 1), Birkhäuser, Basel 2006, ISBN 3-7643-7280- X .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Museum of Design Zurich: Hans Hilfiker, engineer and designer p. 25
  2. ^ Museum of Design Zurich: Hans Hilfiker, engineer and designer p. 26
  3. ^ Museum of Design Zurich: Hans Hilfiker, engineer and designer p. 36
  4. ^ Museum of Design Zurich: Hans Hilfiker, engineer and designer, pp. 38 to 47
  5. ↑ Hilfiker Hans (1901–1993) ( Memento of the original from September 18, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.hilfiker.org
  6. ^ Claude Lichtenstein in: Architects Lexicon of Switzerland 19./20. Century , p. 268
  7. ↑ Christina Sonderegger: Between progress and idle: the standardized kitchen - comments on the development of the Swiss kitchen standard
personal data
SURNAME Hilfiker, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss electrical engineer and the designer of the Swiss station clock
DATE OF BIRTH September 15, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Zurich
DATE OF DEATH March 2, 1993
Place of death Gordevio