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 Molded Plastic & Fiberglass Armchair is a fiberglass chair, designed by Charles and Ray Eames, that appeared on the market in 1950.[1] The chair was intentionally designed for the ‘International Competition for Low-Cost Furniture Design.’ This competition, sponsored by the Museum of Modern Art, was motivated by the urgent need in the post-war period for low-cost housing and furnishing designs adaptable to small housing units. The chair was offered in a variety of colors and bases, such as the “Eiffel Tower” metal base, a wooden base, and a rocker base. The plastic fiberglass armchair is one of the most famous designs of Charles and Ray Eames, and is still popular today. “Getting the most of the best to the greatest number of people for the least”: with these words, Charles and Ray Eames described one of their main goals as furniture designers.
[3] Of all their designs, the Plastic Chairs come closest to achieving this ideal. They found that the use of plastic in furniture design has several advantages: it has pleasant tactile qualities, it has malleability and static strength combined with a high-degree of flexibility, and it makes feasible, via mass-production, their goal of low-cost furniture. The early production of the chair The material of the chair, Zenaloy, which is polyester reinforced with fiberglass, was first developed by the US Army during World War II.[4] Using this material, Ray and Charles Eames designed a prototype chair for the 1948 ‘International Competition of Low-Cost Furniture Design’ held by the Museum of Modern Art. The chairs were made using the latest machines, such as hydraulic press molds from shipbuilding, by manufacturer Zenith Plastics.[4] Mass-producing the molded fiberglass chairs involved a tremendous amount of design and tooling effort, a long period of product development, and considerable investment.
The basic technology involved shaping the fiberglass material with metal molds using a hydraulic press. The armchair was the first one-piece plastic chair whose surface was left uncovered and not upholstered.[1] In 1950, Zenith began mass-producing the fiberglass shell armchairs for Herman Miller, who offered them for sale that year. The fiberglass armchair was included in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in 1950. The Vitra company entered the furniture market in 1957 with the licensed production of furniture from the Herman Miller Collection for the European market. In 1984, the partnership that had been formed with Herman Miller was terminated by mutual consent. Subsequently, Vitra obtained the European and Middle Eastern rights to designs by Charles and Ray Eames and George Nelson. At first, the chair was available in three colors: greige, elephant-hide gray, and parchment. The palette of colors was later expanded. After that, a choice of several possible bases was offered.
The early “H” metal base (the SAX standard model and the LAX lounge lower model), “X” metal base (the DAX dining model), a lower model with metal rod base (the LAR model), a wooden base (the DSW model), a steel-wire base (the DSR model, also known as the “Eiffel-Tower base”), a cast aluminium base with castors (the PACC model), and a wood-rocker base (the RAR model). All of the bases were attached to the seat using hard rubber disks to allow flexibility. Despite the fact that Herman Miller ceased production of the rocker in 1968 (until they reintroduced it 30 years later), pregnant employees continued to receive these chairs as a company gift until 1984, solidifying the rocker as a token of high-end nursery decor.[7] The plastic shell became available in an upholstered (fabric or vinyl) version a year after the introduction of the chair. After the success of the arm chair, the side chair (without arms) was introduced (in the DSW, DSX, and DSR models). Over the years, the plastic chair has undergone some modifications: the curve of the back has become more inclined and upholstery is now glued to the plastic shell.
The Eames plastic armchair immediately became an iconic design and eventually the chair was used in schools, airports, restaurants, and offices around the world. From 1954, the chairs were used as stadium seating with metal rods put together in rows, the Tandem Shell Seating. The chairs are still in production by Herman Miller, Vitra and Modernica. However, each producer uses different material for their chair. In 1993, Vitra discontinued production of the fiberglass shells for ecological reasons. The company resumed manufacture of the shells in 1989 and 2004, respectively, making them available in polypropylene, a more environmentally friendly material.[8] Also, Herman Miller uses the polypropylene material for their production of the chairs.[9] The production process for the new fiberglass chairs by both manufacturers is now emission-free and uses a new, monomer-free resin which creates a safer environment for workers and a more environmentally friendly, recyclable shell. The chairs are still available and, after more than sixty-years, still commonly used by popular interior designers and featured in many magazines.