The space between the icons

In 1981, a major fire largely destroyed a large part of Vitra’s production facilities in Weil am Rhein, near Basel. Rolf and Raymond Fehlbaum, the two sons of the company’s founders, decided to turn the challenge into an opportunity and began a major rethinking of the factory campus. In the following years, English architect Nicholas Grimshaw gave shape to a new building. Then, artists Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen erected a huge sculpture outside the factory representing a hammer, a pair of pliers and a screwdriver – the three main tools employed by upholsterers. Later came Frank Gehry, one of the twentieth century’s most acclaimed architects, who designed a sinuous building with a white plaster facade which was inaugurated in 1989 to host the brand new Vitra Design Museum. 

The Italian designer Bruno Munari once wrote that “the dream of the artist is to get his work displayed in a museum, while the dream of a designer is to get his work into the street markets.” However, at the end of the 1980s, design was starting to reclaim its role as a cultural force, rather than as a mere tool that the industry used to reach the masses.

The Vitra Design Museum was initially focused on displaying a private collection, including furniture by US designers Charles and Ray Eames, whose estate had been acquired by Vitra one year prior, and the Panton Chair by Danish designer Verner Panton, the first object to be independently developed by Vitra back in 1960. Inside the building designed by Gehry, products intended for the mass market were displayed as icons within an icon: polished to the point of shining, they were put on a pedestal with the sole purpose of being admired by their visitors, as if they were works of art. “It’s kind of paradoxical and ambivalent for someone who holds my position,” reflects Kries. “Once you put something into a museum, it becomes a collectible object, available only to a super small clientele of rich collectors. And that’s not what design is made for. Design should be available to many people.” 

Not long after its founding, the scope of the museum began to expand beyond the company’s boundaries: then director Alexander von Vegesack acquired pieces by designers who had never worked with Vitra, opened a publishing house and organised internationally acclaimed exhibitions on Frank Lloyd Wright, Luis Barragán, the Eames, as well as on Czech cubism and the future of mobility. “From the beginning, the museum was open to design, architecture and the arts,” continues Kries, who joined the museum as an intern back in 1995. “Rather than defining the differences, we were more interested in exploring the symbiosis between different areas.” This approach prepared the museum to face a shift that changed the discourse on design at the turn of the millennium, when people began to view it in a broader and more critical way. The focus moved from the object itself to what surrounds it and links it to the rest of society.

“Many design traditions are shaped by an ecosystem that goes beyond design,” he continues. “In Germany, design is linked to the steel industry. In France, it has more to do with interior decoration, and therefore with craft. Switzerland lies somewhat in between these two worlds: objects are produced with the help of innovative machines and technologies, yet this is often done by companies which are still rather small, with a lot of manual work involved. This intermediary position between engineering thought and high skill in execution is a good recipe for innovation and quality. It’s also a matter of responsibility. In a small country, you cannot fool around.” 

The Fehlbaums know this well. In their steady rise to build one of the world’s most renowned and beloved furniture brands, both for the office and for the home, they never lost a sense of balance and respect for where they were coming from. Today, Vitra has operations all over the world, and decisions are still taken by a third-generation family member, Raymond’s daughter Nora, from an office situated not far from where the company was founded. This ethos is reflected in the level of independence that the company has always granted the museum. Staff do not have to inform the company about their activities or ask permission to organise a specific exhibition. Still, many Vitra employees visit the shows to take inspiration or use the collection to discover forgotten designs and put them back into production.

Editorial freedom has allowed the Vitra Design Museum to acquire widespread credibility, interact with public museums and foundations around the world, deal with other corporate sponsors and ultimately reach a much larger audience. “We think it is good to reach many people and translate questions of design in an understandable language,” Kries says. “We want to be popular in a positive sense.” The exhibition currently on display inside the Gehry building is an example of this attitude. Titled Nike. Form Follows Motion, it focuses on the sportswear brand’s design history, from the Swoosh logo to the most iconic sneaker models and recent research on future materials and sustainability. Next on the program is a show about the Shakers, a religious group present in the United States since the late eighteenth century, with exhibition design by the revered contemporary duo Formafantasma.

Occasional visitors to the Vitra Design Museum can also access the Vitra Schaudepot, a building designed by architects Herzog & De Meuron. Since 2016, it has been showcasing a rotating selection of approximately 400 design pieces from the museum’s collection. Overall, the collection includes 20,000 objects, including modern icons by Le Corbusier, Alvar Aalto and Gerrit Rietveld, as well as contemporary 3D-printed furniture and lesser-known or anonymous objects, prototypes and experimental models. The campus itself is a haven for design and architecture enthusiasts: wandering around as if in a small neighbourhood, visitors can encounter a fire station designed by Zaha Hadid, a conference pavilion ideated by Tadao Ando, a factory building by Álvaro Siza and one of Richard Buckminster Fuller’s signature geodesic domes. One of the most recent additions to the campus is Khudi Bari, a small stilt house designed by the Bangladeshi architect Marina Tabassum as a concrete answer to the floods that regularly displace her fellow citizens. “We have created an outdoor seating area beside it. It’s very beautiful to sit there in summer and just enjoy nature,” Kries says. “Today it’s not so much about the buildings, but rather about what happens between them. The focus has shifted from concrete to nature.” 

In summer, the museum director sometimes takes a 20-minute walk up the hill that rises above the campus. From there, he can breathe fresh air and get a full view of Basel, a unique city bordering three countries: France, Switzerland and Germany. From that vantage point, right in the heart of Europe, he can look at the city’s industries on one side, and at the Black Forest on the other. There’s probably no better place to stop and contemplate the future of design.