Vitra (furniture)

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Vitra is a

Vitra – founded by Willi and Erika Fehlbaum, the owner of a shopfitting business – entered the furniture market in 1957 with the licensed production of furniture from the Herman Miller Collection for the European market - primarily designs by Charles and Ray Eames and George Nelson. In 1967 the company introduced the Panton Chair by Verner Panton – the first cantilever chair out of plastic. In 1977 Rolf Fehlbaum took over the management of Vitra. In 1984 the partnership that had been formed with Herman Miller was terminated by mutual consent. Subsequently, Vitra obtained the rights to designs by Charles and Ray Eames and George Nelson for Europe and the Middle East.

Today, Vitra's product line consists of designer furniture for use in offices, homes and public areas. In 2002, the company took in the realm of domestic living.

After a major fire destroyed a large part of the Vitra production facilities in Weil am Rhein in 1981, British architect

Over the years, Vitra accumulated a growing collection of chairs and other furniture. With the aim of making the collection accessible to the public, a museum was established as an independent foundation dedicated to the research and popularization of design and architecture. The Vitra Design Museum from 1989 by Frank Gehry was the first public building on the campus as well as the architect's first building in Europe. Today the museum is partly based on the own broad collection of 20th century furniture as well as host of visiting exhibitions.

The Vitra fire station by Zaha Hadid was the first completed building by the Iraqi architect. The building consists of a garage for fire engines, showers and locker rooms for the fire fighters and a conference room with kitchen facilities. The Fire Station is a sculpture of cast in-situ concrete that contrasts with the orthogonal order of the adjacent factory buildings like the frozen image of an explosion in a photograph. Today the building functions as an exhibition space.

In the same year, a conference pavilion of Japanese architect Tadao Ando was also constructed on the Vitra grounds. It was Ando's first work outside Japan. The calm and restrained structure encompasses an assortment of conference rooms. It is characterized by a highly ordered spatial articulation with a large part of its volume concealed below grade. A striking feature is the footpath leading to the pavilion, which has a significant association with meditation paths in the gardens of Japanese monasteries.

In the year 2000, the Campus was augmented with the addition of the Dome: a lightweight geodesic structure after

The VitraHaus by Herzog & de Meuron, the latest addition to the Vitra Campus, opened in 2010 as the company's flagship store and home of the Vitra Home Collection. The concept of the VitraHaus connects two themes that appear repeatedly in the oeuvre of the Basel-based architects: the theme of the archetypal house and the theme of stacked volumes.

In June 2014 the Vitra Slide Tower was inaugurated.

Awards and projects

Vitra's products have received numerous design-related awards by international organizations. Vitra products have been used in numerous high-profile settings, including the plenary chamber of the German

Locations

The company's website lists national subsidiaries in Austria, Belgium, China, the

See also

• Rolf Fehlbaum
• Vitra Design Museum

References