Ulmer stool with drawer

The Ulm Stool - designed in 1955 by Max Bill, the first director of the Ulm University of Design, in collaboration with Hans Gugelot and Paul Hildinger for the students* of this very university - is a furniture as simple as it is multifunctional. It can serve as a seat, a side table, a shelf and a carrying aid for the books needed during studies. It is thus a prime example of the perfection that an object achieves when it can no longer be improved by omission. The variant recently added to it by its Swiss manufacturer - also a design by Master Bill himself - takes away one of these functions, but adds a relevant functional added value in the form of a drawer integrated without fittings.

This drawer, like the stool itself, is made of untreated spruce wood, worked with dovetailed edges and equipped with a simple but effective pull-out stop. Thus, the stool is deprived of its originally intended, but in practice but rather rarely seen functionality as a book carrier, but he fits noticeably better in the role he has grown over the decades as a night and side table.