Vitra

Vitra is a manufacturer of office furniture and home furnishings. Vitra's headquarters are located in Biersfelden, near Basel, Switzerland. On the other side of the Rhine, in Weil am Rhein, the furniture manufacturer maintains an area known as the Vitra Campus. This campus houses sales, logistics, production, training rooms, a showroom (Vitra Haus), and a museum (Vitra Design Museum). It also contains a so-called... Verner Panton The path, a dirt road lined with colored poles, and the Vitra Slide Tower, an experiential work of art for sliding and for the purpose of viewing.

Since the 1950s, Vitra has been manufacturing designs by various designers. George Nelson, Charles and Ray Eames were the first whose furniture was produced by company founders Erika and Willi Fehlbaum in Weil am Rhein. Fehlbaum had already taken over a shopfitting business in 1934, which gradually shifted its focus to furniture manufacturing.

During a trip to the USA, the Swiss couple learned, among other things, about American culture. DesignerThe Fehlbaums were acquainted with Ray and Charles Eames. They acquired the distribution licenses from Herman Miller, whose furniture was already well-established in the United States. Around this time, their paths also crossed with Verner Panton. He was obsessed with designing a visionary cantilever chair made entirely of plastic. The Fehlbaums believed in the idea and supported Panton in his development work. In 1967, the Panton Chair was launched. Over the years, this foundation fostered a fruitful collaboration with Verner Panton and other progressive designers. The range of furniture for commercial, public, and private spaces expanded.

In 1981, by which time Rolf Fehlbaum had succeeded his father as head of the company, a fire destroyed a large part of the historically developed production buildings. Since then, buildings by renowned architects such as Frank Gehry, Nicholas Grimshaw, Zaha Hadid, Tadao Ando, Alvaro Siza, Herzog & de Meuron, and SANAA have gathered on this site, forming the Vitra Campus. The Vitra Design Museum was Frank Gehry's first building outside North America. Tadao Ando made his mark outside Japan with a conference and convention center, completed in 1993. In the same year, Zaha Hadid also celebrated a premiere with Vitra. Her fire station was her first realized building and heralded her spectacular style.

In addition to providing a breeding ground for contemporary design, Vitra's "Net 'n Nest" addresses the changing demands of everyday work life. "Net" envisions the office as both a hub for communication and a retreat, a "nest." With the ID-Chair, Vitra ventured into the office chair segment in 2010 with its own product. According to the company, the chair offers 8,000 possible configurations.

All implementations should be guided by ecological principles and economic responsibility. Vitra emphasizes that this is not an externally imposed obligation. Rather, it is a design question that has always been part of its own industrial heritage. For Vitra, the functional value of a piece of furniture simply includes the requirement that its production, use, and disposal cause no harm.

The longevity of the products is central to Vitra's approach. Short-lived styling and fashion are avoided. The best example of this are the design classics, which remain youthful and unworn for decades. As is otherwise only common with classic cars, some chairs, Tables and sofas often change hands multiple times and find their way into museums and private design collections. Because of their value, Vitra design classics are practically predestined to be copied. Most copies reach Germany via Italy and Great Britain, for example, and are then sold on a large scale. Anyone who wants to be sure of getting an original should always buy from a specialist retailer.

“Sustainability is like morality: you should live it, but talk about it little. Our roots in modern design make the first step easy: products that eliminate everything superfluous and last a long time.” Rolf Fehlbaum, Chairman of Vitra. Since 2013, his niece Nora Fehlbaum has been managing the company.