Vitra is a Swiss family-owned furniture company founded by Willi and Erika Fehlbaum. After WWII they moved the production facilities of their small furniture shop located in Biersfelden, Switzerland, to Weil am Rhein, Germany, and named their company Vitra. On his US trip in 1953, Willi Fehlbaum discovered the designs of Charles & Ray Eames. Subsequently, he acquired the production licenses through Herman Miller not only for Eames but also for George Nelson. In 1967 the Panton chair by Verner Panton was launched, the first cantilever chair made out of plastic. In 1977 son Rolf Fehlbaum took over and in 1984 the partnership with Herman Miller was terminated - without loosing the rights to designs by Charles & Ray Eames and George Nelson for Europe and the Middle East. Today, Vitra produces furniture for homes, offices and public areas. Their home collection includes not only classics by Charles & Ray Eames, Verner Panton and Alexander Girard but also pieces by designers such as Antonio Citterio, Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec and Hella Jongerius to name just a few.
The Vitra Campus is always worth a day visit. At the VitraHaus, designed by Herzog & deMeuron, you get a chance to stroll around, explore your love for design and place an order for any design piece your heart desires. The Frank Gehry's Vitra Design Museum consistently features exquisite exhibits on the works by important designers such as Alvaro Aalto, Gerrit Rietveld, Charles & Ray Eames. And there is also a two-hour architectural tour (both in German and English), which gives you a closer look at the production facilities designed by a group of the most notable architects of today.
To learn more, visit Vitra.
Vitra & G-Star RAW launch Prouvé RAW Office Edition.
Vitra Campus Architecture
The architectural campus features following buildings:
Petrol Station, Jean Prouvé, ca. 1953/2003
Airstream Kiosk, 1968/2011
Dome, Richard Buckminster Fuller, 1978/2000
Factory Buildings, Nicholas Grimshaw, 1981/1986
Balancing Tools, Claes Oldenburg & Coosje van Bruggen, 1984
Vitra Design Museum Gallery and Gate, Frank Gehry, 1989
Vitra Design Museum, Frank Gehry, 1989
Factory Building, Frank Gehry, 1989
Fire Station, Zaha Hadid, 1993
Conference Pavilion, Tadao Ando, 1993
Factory Building, Álvaro Siza, 1994
Bus Stop, Jasper Morrison, 2006
VitraHaus, Herzog & de Meuron, 2010
Diogene, Renzo Piano, 2013
Promenade, Álvaro Siza 2014
Vitra Slide Tower, Carsten Höller, 2014
