Vitra Design Museum
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The Vitra Design Museum is a privately owned museum for
design A design is the concept or proposal for an object, process, or system. The word ''design'' refers to something that is or has been intentionally created by a thinking agent, and is sometimes used to refer to the inherent nature of something ...
in
Weil am Rhein Weil am Rhein (, ; High Alemannic German, High Alemannic: ''Wiil am Rhii'') is a German town and commune. It is on the east bank of the River Rhine, and extends to the tripoint of Switzerland, France, and Germany. It is the most southwesterly tow ...
,
Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...
. The architect of this building was Frank O. Gehry. His architecture was based on the art movement of the early 20th century, deconstructivism. Making the building itself a work of art along with the work in the museum. There were many exhibitions within this museum that demonstrated architecture through a multitude of different forms. Former Vitra CEO, and son of Vitra founders Willi and Erika Fehlbaum, Rolf Fehlbaum founded the museum in 1989 as an independent private foundation. The Vitra corporation provides it with a financial subsidy, the use of Vitra architecture, and organizational cooperation. Frank O.Gehry was inspired by Raphael Soriano early in his career, but soon developed his own style with very curvilinear forms and structures, he wanted the building to feel alive. He was the architect for many museums and concert halls because he liked the relationship that the music and the art had to the people in the space. Gehry created museums that were warehouses with no windows making the skin the main aspect of the building which forces the architecture to play with the nature around it.


Collection and activities

The museum's collection, focusing on
furniture Furniture refers to objects intended to support various human activities such as seating (e.g., Stool (seat), stools, chairs, and sofas), eating (table (furniture), tables), storing items, working, and sleeping (e.g., beds and hammocks). Furnitur ...
and
interior design Interior design is the art and science of enhancing the interior of a building to achieve a healthier and more aesthetically pleasing environment for the people using the space. With a keen eye for detail and a Creativity, creative flair, an ...
, is centered on the bequest of U.S. designers
Charles Charles is a masculine given name predominantly found in English language, English and French language, French speaking countries. It is from the French form ''Charles'' of the Proto-Germanic, Proto-Germanic name (in runic alphabet) or ''* ...
and
Ray Eames Ray-Bernice Alexandra Kaiser Eames (née Kaiser; December 15, 1912 – August 21, 1988) was an American artist and designer who worked in a variety of media. In creative partnership with her husband, Charles Eames, and The Eames Office, she was ...
, as well as numerous works of designers such as George Nelson, Alvar Aalto, Verner Panton, Dieter Rams, Jean Prouvé, Richard Hutten and Michael Thonet. It is one of the world's largest collections of modern furniture design, including pieces representative of all major periods and styles from the beginning of the nineteenth century onwards. These works, originally the private collection of Rolf Fehlbaum, are now permanently on display at the newly completed Schaudepot building on the Vitra premises. In addition, the museum puts on temporary exhibitions in the main building, often with loans from other collections. In turn, parts of the collection are lent to other institutions around the world. In addition, the museum produces workshops, publications and museum products, as well as maintaining an archive, a restoration and conservation laboratory, and a research library. It also organises guided tours of the Vitra premises, a major attraction to those interested in modern
architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and construction, constructi ...
. The museum produced the travelling exhibition 'Rudolf Steiner - Alchemy of the Everyday', a major retrospective exhibition drawn from its own collection and borrowed exhibits, coinciding with the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the birth of its subject. Radical Design is an art exhibition that was shown in the museum in the 1960s and 70s. This exhibition was not shown in the main building, but in one of the storage buildings that also shows work of the museum. The architects of this storage unit, Schaudepot, was Herzog & de Meuron. The storage unit opened in June of 2016 and the Radical Design was the first exhibition. This exhibition shows work from Italian artists that were going against the times of
consumerism Consumerism is a socio-cultural and economic phenomenon that is typical of industrialized societies. It is characterized by the continuous acquisition of goods and services in ever-increasing quantities. In contemporary consumer society, the ...
and mass production. Because of their beliefs there were very few building contracts so these groups were formed to create work that was absurd, provocative, fantastical, and contradictory. Seven of these projects were shown in the museums storage unit. This additional building is large so it can exhibit some of their larger pieces. The artwork is shown in the long hallways that are sectioned off. The work for the Radical Design exhibition is presented in context of other works to show the history and to better understand that history behind the work and what preceded the times.
Cubism Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement which began in Paris. It revolutionized painting and the visual arts, and sparked artistic innovations in music, ballet, literature, and architecture. Cubist subjects are analyzed, broke ...
is a movement that happened all over Europe during the early 20th century. Czech Cubism is a movement that happened in the
Czech Republic The Czech Republic, also known as Czechia, and historically known as Bohemia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the south ...
and was based on the decorative arts and architecture which is the main exhibitions in the Vitra museum. Alexander von Vegesack published a book about this topic in 1991. This book discusses the movement of Cubism itself, but also how this movement affected architecture, and specifically what was happening with Czech architects, painters, sculptors, and authors. This group of artist created an exhibition that travelled throughout the Czech Republic and was exhibited in the Vitra Design Museum in the late 1900s which reintroduced the culture to Europe.


Museum building

The museum building, an architectural attraction in its own right, was Frank O. Gehry's first building in Europe, realised in cooperation with the
Lörrach Lörrach () is a city in southwest Germany, in the valley of the Wiese, close to the French and the Swiss borders. It is the district seat of the district of Lörrach in Baden-Württemberg. It is the home of a number of large employers, inclu ...
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 did not opt for his usual mix of materials, but limited himself to white plaster and a
titanium Titanium is a chemical element; it has symbol Ti and atomic number 22. Found in nature only as an oxide, it can be reduced to produce a lustrous transition metal with a silver color, low density, and high strength, resistant to corrosion in ...
zinc Zinc is a chemical element; it has symbol Zn and atomic number 30. It is a slightly brittle metal at room temperature and has a shiny-greyish appearance when oxidation is removed. It is the first element in group 12 (IIB) of the periodic tabl ...
alloy. For the first time, he allowed curved forms to break up his more usual angular shapes. The sloping white forms appear to echo the Notre Dame du Haut chapel by
Le Corbusier Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (6 October 188727 August 1965), known as Le Corbusier ( , ; ), was a Swiss-French architectural designer, painter, urban planner and writer, who was one of the pioneers of what is now regarded as modern architecture ...
in Ronchamp,
France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...
, not far from Weil. The building was based on the art movement of
deconstructivism Deconstructivism is a postmodern architecture, postmodern architectural movement which appeared in the 1980s. It gives the impression of the fragmentation of the constructed building, commonly characterised by an absence of obvious harmony, ...
and deconstructive architecture. This movement moves away from rational architecture and unity, harmony, and continuity. These architectural designs were geometric without being rectilinear but rather distorted and displaced. Instead it follows the golden rectangle which is a proportional system that allows the work to function proportionally. Architecture critic Paul Heyer described the general impression on the visitor as The building backs the factory fence and is embedded in a meadow adorned with cherry trees. Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen's prominent sculpture ''Balancing Tools'' provides a colourful contrast, while Tadao Ando's nearby conference pavilion gives a more muted one. The neighboring Vitra Fire Station ( a former fire station) is used for some of the events and exhibitions of the museum. File:Vitra Design Museum.JPG, East side view File:Vitra Design Museum, side view.jpg, Street side view File:Vitra Design Museum, factory side view.jpg, Factory side view File:Balancing Tools.jpg, The nearby ''Balancing Tools'' by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen


See also

* List of works by Frank Gehry


External links


Vitra Design Museum Website
on the Guggenheim Foundation website


Notes

{{Authority control Art museums and galleries established in 1989 Frank Gehry buildings Design museums in Germany Art museums and galleries in Germany Modernist architecture in Germany Museums in Baden-Württemberg 1989 establishments in West Germany German design Industrial design collections