Having read a book on the 'Nature of Beauty' by Friedrich Cramer and Wolfgang Kämpfer, we at FSB hit upon the idea of fathoming the mystery of beauty in the world of door handles with the aid of the Golden Section.

The mystery of beauty, we had read, is closely bound up with the history of an irrational number whose mysterious power man had been attempting to interpret since Vitruvius (first century B.C.).

We learnt about multifarious endeavours by leading minds to visualise this mystery-enshrouded number, we read about proportioned sketches by Leonardo da Vinci and the series of numbers discovered by Leonardo of Pisa (1170 to 1220), read about flying squares and less flightworthy rectangles.

We discovered that this 'ineffable number' (Johannes Kepler, 1571 to 1630) is a symbol for the dynamics of the life process that is generally regarded as being beautiful if it adheres to the principle of self-similitude. One merely needs to observe the natural growth spiral of a sea-shell, a daisy or a sunflower’s infructescence.

Fascinated by these mathematical interpretations of beauty in nature, we immediately harnessed the dynamics of the Golden Section for our own purposes and came up with a pleasing door-handle style.

In our Design Engineering department we generated a radial grid system in our CAD system, entered the technical specifications for a door handle and, with the aid of right angles and Fibonacci’s numbers (0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, ...), constructed a line through swirling rectagles.

Before our eyes, the aesthetic soul of a handle form gently reclining towards the door materialised – an irrational measure so compelling we were a little dumbfounded.

The rest was plain sailing. Drawing on our ergonomic know-how, we arrived at three handle cross-sections, one traditionally circular, one ergonomically
triangular, and one elegantly square.

We, the 650-strong FSB workforce, are proud of our new co-operatively produced lever-handle collection. The market had been getting on at us for years to provide an alternative to the classic lever-handle style rooted in the Pythagorean laws and incapable of more than 'harmonia et symmetria'.

It was not until we shot a glance at Nature and familiarised ourselves with the laws of the Golden Section and the mystery of the irrational proportional
number that we hit upon the innovative alternative the market was anticipating by way of the dynamic golden growth curve.

FSB 7010 In works design FSB 7010, the 'dynamic golden growth spiral' was recreated with a round cross-section, the lever tapering progressively towards the tip. This effect enhances the momentum of the natural curvature. With its restrained looks and direction-of-motion styling, FSB 7010 is a joy to hold and use.

FSB 7011 In the case of works design FSB 7011, the round crosssection of the FSB 7010 model makes way for an ergonomic triangular form. Very striking here is the organic ease with which the shank of the handle initiates the 'dynamic golden growth spiral' and oversees a tapering of the grip's crosssection from 24 mm to 18 mm at the tip. This is an unobtrusive, non-slip design that reflects the direction of motion.

FSB 7012 Works design FSB 7012 yokes the 'dynamic golden growth spiral' to an elegant square cross-section. In this series, we quite deliberately adopted three classical Euclidean forms – circle, triangle and square. We wanted to demonstrate that the 'dynamic golden growth spiral' applies for all forms. In this model, too, the grip tapers as the spiral expands. This tough handle is conducive to gripping and features direction-of-motion styling.