Vitra Design Museum
The Vitra Design Museum is an internationally renowned and privately owned museum for design in Weil am Rhein, Germany.Vitra CEO Rolf Fehlbaum founded the museum in 1989 as an independent private foundation.
The museum, Frank O. Gehry’s first European building, an architectural attraction, is realised in cooperation with the Lörrach architect Günter Pfeifer. Together with the museum, which was originally just designed to house Rolf Fehlbaum's private collection, Gehry also built a more functional-looking production hall and a gatehouse for the close-by Vitra factory.
Although Gehry used his trademark sculptural deconstructivist style for the museum building, he limited himself to white plaster and a titanium-zinc alloy, not opting for his usual mix of materials. He allowed curved forms to break up his more usual angular shapes.
Architecture critic Paul Heyer describes the general impression on the visitor as
“... a continuous changing swirl of white forms on the exterior, each seemingly without apparent relationship to the other, with its interiors a dynamically powerful interplay, in turn directly expressive of the exterior convolutions. As a totality it resolves itself into an entwined coherent display...”
The geometry of the building does not feel contrived, or particularly noticeable, as you go around the exhibitions. From the outside it does feel both those things, but it is at home among the other architectural showpieces that make up the Vitra site.
The inception of the Vitra Design Museum dates back to the early 1980s. With the aim of documenting the history of the Vitra company, Vitra CEO Rolf Fehlbaum began collecting the furniture of designers who had influenced the company's development, such as Charles and Ray Eames, George Nelson, Alvar Aalto, and Jean Prouvé. The design museum houses temporary exhibitions on themes of furniture design, and Gehry's building makes a suitable host for them - in keeping with the theme, but - once inside - supporting, not competing with, the exhibitions. As well as Frank Gehry, Alvaro Siza, Nicholas Grimshaw, Tadao Ando and Zaha Hadid are all represented with separate buildings on the grounds of Vitra, in a cross between an industrial plant and a model village.
The museum, Frank O. Gehry’s first European building, an architectural attraction, is realised in cooperation with the Lörrach architect Günter Pfeifer. Together with the museum, which was originally just designed to house Rolf Fehlbaum's private collection, Gehry also built a more functional-looking production hall and a gatehouse for the close-by Vitra factory.
Although Gehry used his trademark sculptural deconstructivist style for the museum building, he limited himself to white plaster and a titanium-zinc alloy, not opting for his usual mix of materials. He allowed curved forms to break up his more usual angular shapes.
Architecture critic Paul Heyer describes the general impression on the visitor as
“... a continuous changing swirl of white forms on the exterior, each seemingly without apparent relationship to the other, with its interiors a dynamically powerful interplay, in turn directly expressive of the exterior convolutions. As a totality it resolves itself into an entwined coherent display...”
The geometry of the building does not feel contrived, or particularly noticeable, as you go around the exhibitions. From the outside it does feel both those things, but it is at home among the other architectural showpieces that make up the Vitra site.
The inception of the Vitra Design Museum dates back to the early 1980s. With the aim of documenting the history of the Vitra company, Vitra CEO Rolf Fehlbaum began collecting the furniture of designers who had influenced the company's development, such as Charles and Ray Eames, George Nelson, Alvar Aalto, and Jean Prouvé. The design museum houses temporary exhibitions on themes of furniture design, and Gehry's building makes a suitable host for them - in keeping with the theme, but - once inside - supporting, not competing with, the exhibitions. As well as Frank Gehry, Alvaro Siza, Nicholas Grimshaw, Tadao Ando and Zaha Hadid are all represented with separate buildings on the grounds of Vitra, in a cross between an industrial plant and a model village.
References:
* Images by Liao Yusheng
* Great Buildings
* Wikipedia
* Galinksy
* Dane Johns/ Lachlan Stanton/ Sarah Passarelli
* P.Heyer, American Architecture: Ideas and Ideologies, p233-234.
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