Atelier Alinea plc was founded by Werner Abt in 1993. The manufacturing company emerged out of ALINEA plc, which was founded in 1973 also by him as a commercial enterprise in office and home furniture as well as office planning and interior design. Atelier Alinea plc wants to focus primarily on innovative furniture concepts and their realisation. In-house and independent designers are called on to create individual furniture items for office and living areas. Our focus on the international market enables us to sell our products through specialist traders in Switzerland and abroad. Commissioned furniture should always have a social context and bear evidence thereof. The location of Heimberg near Thun as production site was chosen because it offers an existing network of suitable suppliers with the necessary expertise to develop new products and techniques.
Contemporary thinking and its ideal – to satisfy the needs of the wider society by industrialisation - has come into effect to a very great degree in industrial nations. The automating of work processes associated with this ideal has forged so far ahead that it is increasingly depriving people of work.
Robots and automated machinery manufacture mass products. Against merciless competitive pressure to centralise production, industry strives to add external individuality to the design of industrial products. Nowadays, products become obsolete more in aesthetic than physical terms.
Manufacturers, to maintain their sales at maximum, have to persuade consumers to replace their products more frequently. This, in turn, is responsible for hidden inflation, which has a bad effect on national economies. The depreciation in currency must be compensated for by a continuous lowering of prices. This means that the quality suffers and with it, the service life of goods is reduced. Enhancements are no longer made and experience is no longer fed back into the product. All that happens is that a new and cheaper model is produced.
With our products, we want to buck this trend. We are promoting the modernity of long service life. This includes a correspondingly selective reading of products and procedures for the products and services that we offer. We believe that requirement of our time should be: long service life, functionality, the ability to be repaired, keeping it to the essential functions, and compatibility. Independence from mass production by incorporating human manpower and skills. Individuality through innovation - cutting out all the fashionable aspects. And the products should provide an expression of our times and of our culture.
