Vitra is a Swiss family-owned furniture company with headquarters in Birsfelden, Switzerland. It is the manufacturer of the works of many internationally renowned furniture designers. Vitra is also known for the works of notable architects that make up its premises in Weil am Rhein, Germany, in particular the Vitra Design Museum. Factory building and passage cover, Álvaro Siza Vitra Design Museum, Frank Gehry Vitra – founded by Willi and Erika Fehlbaum, the owner of a shopfitting business – entered the furniture market in 1957 with the licensed production of furniture from the Herman Miller Collection for the European market - primarily designs by Charles and Ray Eames and George Nelson. In 1967 the company introduced the Panton Chair by Verner Panton – the first cantilever chair out of plastic. In 1977 Rolf Fehlbaum took over the management of Vitra. In 1984 the partnership that had been formed with Herman Miller was terminated by mutual consent. Subsequently, Vitra obtained the rights to designs by Charles and Ray Eames and George Nelson for Europe and the Middle East.
Today, Vitra's product line consists of designer furniture for use in offices, homes and public areas. In 2002, the company took in the realm of domestic living. Launched in 2004, the Home Collection includes classic furniture design pieces by Charles and Ray Eames, George Nelson, Verner Panton, Alexander Girard and Jean Prouvé, as well as the works of designers such as Antonio Citterio, Jasper Morrison, Alberto Meda, Maarten van Severen, Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec, Hella Jongerius and BarberOsgerby. After a major fire destroyed a large part of the Vitra production facilities in Weil am Rhein in 1981, British architect Nicholas Grimshaw was commissioned to design new factory buildings and develop a master plan for the company premises. Inspired by his acquaintance with Frank Gehry in the mid-1980s, however, Vitra departed from Grimshaw’s plan for a unified corporate project. Since that time, buildings have been erected on the Vitra grounds in Weil am Rhein by a wide ranging group of architects, including Frank Gehry (Vitra Design Museum and Factory Building, 1989), Zaha Hadid (Fire Station, 1993), Tadao Ando (Conference Pavilion, 1993), Alvaro Siza (Factory Building, Passage Cover, Car Parking, 1994),[1] Herzog & de Meuron (VitraHaus, 2010), and SANAA (Factory Building
Over the years, Vitra accumulated a growing collection of chairs and other furniture. With the aim of making the collection accessible to the public, a museum was established as an independent foundation dedicated to the research and popularization of design and architecture. The Vitra Design Museum from 1989 by Frank Gehry was the first public building on the campus as well as the architect's first building in Europe. Today the museum is partly based on the own broad collection of 20th century furniture as well as host of visiting exhibitions. The fire station by Zaha Hadid was the first completed building by the Iraqi architect. The building consists of a garage for fire engines, showers and locker rooms for the fire fighters and a conference room with kitchen facilities. The Fire Station is a sculpture of cast in-situ concrete that contrasts with the orthogonal order of the adjacent factory buildings like the frozen image of an explosion in a photograph. Today the building functions as an exhibition space.
In the same year, a conference pavilion of Japanese architect Tadao Ando was also constructed on the Vitra grounds. It was Ando's first work outside Japan. The calm and restrained structure encompasses an assortment of conference rooms. It is characterized by a highly ordered spatial articulation with a large part of its volume concealed below grade. A striking feature is the footpath leading to the pavilion, which has a significant association with meditation paths in the gardens of Japanese monasteries. In the year 2000, the Campus was augmented with the addition of the Dome: a lightweight geodesic structure after Richard Buckminster Fuller, which was developed by T.C. Howard at Charter Industries in 1975 and transplanted from its original location in Detroit, USA, to Weil am Rhein. It is currently used as a space for events. In 2003, a petrol station by the French designer Jean Prouvé - originally constructed in 1953 - was moved to the Vitra Campus. The VitraHaus by Herzog & de Meuron, the latest addition to the Vitra Campus, opened in 2010 as the company's flagship store and home of the Vitra Home Collection.
The concept of the VitraHaus connects two themes that appear repeatedly in the oeuvre of the Basel-based architects: the theme of the archetypal house and the theme of stacked volumes. In June 2014 the Vitra Slide Tower was inaugurated. Vitra's products have received numerous design-related awards by international organizations. Vitra products have been used in numerous high-profile settings, including the plenary chamber of the German Bundestag, the Tate Modern in London, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, Deutsche Bank headquarters in Frankfurt, Novartis in Basel, Dubai International Airport or the Munich International Airport. The company's website lists national subsidiaries in Austria, Belgium, China, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, India, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom and the United States. Vitra also has showrooms in numerous international cities. Production sites are located in Weil am Rhein (Germany), Neuenburg (Germany), Allentown (United States), Zhuhai (China) and Goka (Japan).
Kenneth Frampton: Álvaro Siza. Complete Works, Phaidon, London, 2000, ISBN 978-0714840048 Media related to Vitra (furniture) at Wikimedia Commons The Eames Lounge Chair and ottoman are furnishings made of molded plywood and leather, designed by Charles and Ray Eames for the Herman Miller furniture company. They are officially titled Eames Lounge (670) and Ottoman (671) and were released in 1956 after years of development by designers. It was the first chair that the Eameses designed for a high-end market. Examples of these furnishings are part of the permanent collection of New York's Museum of Modern Art. Charles and Ray Eames aimed to develop furniture that could be mass-produced and affordable, with the exception of the Eames Lounge Chair. This luxury item was inspired by the traditional English Club Chair. The Eames Lounge Chair is an icon of Modern style design, although when it was first made, Ray Eames remarked in a letter to Charles that the chair looked "comfortable and un-designy".
Charles's vision was for a chair with "the warm, receptive look of a well-used first baseman's mitt." The chair is composed of three curved plywood shells: the headrest, the backrest and the seat. In early production, beginning in 1956 and running through the very early 1990s, the shells were made up of five thin layers of plywood which were covered by a veneer of Brazilian rosewood. The use of Brazilian rosewood was discontinued in the early 1990s, and current production since then consists of seven layers of plywood covered by finishing veneers of cherry, walnut, Palisander rosewood (a sustainably grown wood with similar grain patterns to the original Brazilian versions), and other finishes. The layers are glued together and shaped under heat and pressure. Earlier models are differentiated from newer models by the sets of rubber spacers between the aluminum spines and the wood panels first used in the earliest production models (and then hard plastic washers used in later versions) early first series versions of the chair used three screws to secure the armrests, second series models used two, the domes of silence (glides/feet) on the chair base had thinner screws originally (1950's era) attaching them to the aluminium base
, these are not compatible with later chairs. In the earlier models, the zipper around the cushions may have been brown or black as well, and in newer models the zippers are black. The shells and the seat cushions are essentially the same shape, and composed of two curved forms interlocking to form a solid mass. The chair back and headrest are identical in proportion, as are the seat and the ottoman. Early ottomans had removable rubber slide on feet with metal glides. Early labels are oblong foil type. The Eameses constantly made use of new materials. The pair's first plywood chair—the Eames Lounge Chair Wood (LCW)—made use of a heavy rubber washer glued to the backrest of the chair and screwed to the lumbar support. These washers, which have come to be called 'shock mounts', allow the backrest to flex slightly. This technology was brought back in the 670 Lounge chair. The backrest and headrest are screwed together by a pair of aluminum supports. This unit is suspended on the seat via two connection points in the armrests.
The armrests are screwed to shock mounts which are connected only via glue to the interior of the backrest shell, allowing the backrest and headrest to flex when the chair is in use. This is part of the chair's unusual design, as well as its weakest link. The shock mounts have been known to tear free causing catastrophic collapse and damage. Other creative uses of materials include the seat cushions - which eschew standard stapled or nailed upholstery. Instead, the cushions are sewn with a zipper around the outer edge that connects them to a stiff plastic backing. The backing affixes to the plywood shells with a series of hidden clips and rings. This design, along with the hidden shock mounts in the armrest allow the outside veneer of the chair to be unmarred by screws or bolts. The chair has a low seat which is permanently fixed at a recline. The seat of the chair swivels on a cast aluminum base, with glides that are threaded so that the chair may remain level. The Eames Lounge Chair first appeared[1] on the Arlene Francis Home show broadcast on the NBC television network in the USA in 1956.
Immediately following the debut, Herman Miller launched an advertising campaign that highlighted the versatility of the chair. Print ads depicted the 670 in a Victorian parlor, occupied by a grandmother shelling peas on the front porch of an American Gothic style house, and in the middle of a sunny field of hay. One notable advertisement was produced by the Eameses for Herman Miller warning consumers against imitations and knockoffs[]. It has been frequently featured in Frasier as a piece of furniture in the title character's apartment. In the final episode of the series, Martin Crane remarks that he finds it comfortable and hints that he may not have needed his recliner after all. A knockoff of the Eames Lounge Chair has been frequently featured in the show House, in the protagonist's office. Malory Archer's office chair in Archer is also an animation of the Eames Lounge Chair. Since its introduction, the chair has been in continuous production by Herman Miller in America. Later, Vitra (in cooperation with the German furniture company Fritz Becker KG) began producing the chair for the European market.