Collection
Collection
The Vitra Design Museum would be unthinkable without its extensive collection of design objects. They form the basis of many exhibitions, publications and research projects. The focus of the collection lies on industrial furniture design and lighting – in these areas, the unique holdings of the museum are of international importance. They are supplemented by smaller groups of objects, including cutlery, consumer electronics and architectural models. The Collection of the Eames Office as well as estates of prominent designers such as Alexander Girard, Anton Lorenz, George Nelson and Verner Panton are also maintained by the Vitra Design Museum. The expert preservation of the collection is ensured by the museum’s own conservation workshop. An extensive document archive and a library complement the collection, which is constantly expanding. The Vitra Design Museum regularly provides loans to other museums and galleries, including renowned partners as the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Collection Online
Collection Online
The Online Collection includes detailed information about selected objects from the collection and will be expanded continuously in the coming years. Here you won’t just find extensive details about each object, but also explanatory text and image materials, biographies of the most important designers as well as texts on the history of significant furniture manufacturers. Collection Online
Vitra Schaudepot
Vitra Schaudepot
The Vitra Schaudepot was designed for the Vitra Design Museum by star architects Herzog & de Meuron. One of the world’s largest permanent exhibitions of modern furniture design, the Vitra Schaudepot presents key objects from the museum’s extensive collection and provides an invaluable research source. The Vitra Design Museum collection includes nearly twenty thousand objects, with some seven thousand pieces of furniture, more than one thousand lamps,the Eames Office Collection, and several archives and estates of architects and designers like Verner Panton, Alexander Girard, or Luis Barragán. Displays in the Vitra Schaudepot showcase a changing selection of more than four hundred key pieces of modern furniture design from the 1800s to today
More information
Exhibitions
> Science Fiction Design: From Space Age to Metaverse
> Vitra Schaudepot Lab
Guided Tours
> Guided Tours – Vitra Schaudepot
Furniture
Furniture
The furniture collection of the Vitra Design Museum encompasses the major eras, themes and protagonists of industrial furniture design. The core holdings comprise approximately 7000 objects, with an emphasis on the following areas:
- The beginnings of modern design in the 19th century (e.g. bentwood furniture, Vienna Secession, American patent furniture, German Werkbund)
- Classic modernism (Bauhaus, De Stijl and others)
- Post war design (e.g. design from Scandinavia and Italy, American designers like Eames, Nelson, Girard and more)
- Tendencies of the 1960s and 1970s (Radical Design, experimental plastic objects, modular furniture, new office concepts)
- Postmodern tendencies (Memphis, Droog Design and others)
- Contemporary design (Critical Design, New Crafts, Computer Aided Design, DIY, Sustainable Design)
- Biographies of their designers.
- Collection online
For image enquiries, please contact pictures(at)design-museum.de
Lighting
Lighting
The collection of lighting in the Vitra Design Museum consists of approximately 1000 objects. It includes many classics of the 20th century, such as the legendary lamp “WG24“ by Wilhelm Wagenfeld (1924) or Richard Sapper’s “Tizio“ lamp (1972), but also rare pieces, prototypes and one-offs. The lighting collection documents the combination of technological innovation with design aesthetics and demonstrates the fascination that many designers have for the psychological and philosophical aspects of light.
Collection Online
For image enquiries, please contact pictures(at)design-museum.de
Other Collectibles
Other Collectibles
For its exhibitions over the past decades, Vitra Design Museum has grown a significant collection of architectural models which have been built in the museum’s own model making workshops. It comprises models of works by architects like Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Marcel Breuer, Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright and others. The collection of electronics includes works by Dieter Rams for Braun and other significant design objects of the 20th century. Another special collection is dedicated to cutlery.
Collection Online
For image enquiries, please contact pictures(at)design-museum.de
Library
Library
The Vitra Design Museum Library is a research library for design and architecture, specializing in furniture design and its influence on interior architecture from the beginning of the industrial age to the present. In addition, the library includes printed matter related to the applied arts, photography, urban planning, the humanities, and social and applied sciences.
The library’s holdings encompass over 7000 volumes on open-stack shelving and a large inventory of international periodicals from the 1950s up to today, providing primary research material for the preparation of new exhibitions and projects, along with sources for the documentation and contextualisation of objects in the museum collection and its archives.
Information about the contents of the Vitra Design Museum Library, which belongs to the SWB Library Network (Südwestdeutscher Bibliotheksverbund), is accessible through an online catalogue.
The non-circulating library is open to the public by prior appointment from 9.00 – 12.00 am and 1.00 – 5.00 pm on weekdays. If you are interested, please contact the following email address for an appointment: bibliothek@design-museum.de
Archive & Estates
Archive & Estates
The Collection of the Eames Office as well as the estates of prominent designers such as Alexander Girard, Anton Lorenz, George Nelson, and others are maintained in the archive of the Vitra Design Museum. The holdings also include company publications, brochures, posters, patent documents and drawings.
If you have questions regarding the archive, please contact
archive(at)design-museum.de
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Conservation
Conservation
The preservation and conservation of the objects in the Vitra Design Museum collection and archive is overseen by the museum’s own conservation workshop. A special focus of this work is devoted to the issues and problems posed by the aging of plastic materials. In cooperation with international research institutes, universities and other museums, the Vitra Design Museum conservation workshop is constantly gaining new knowledge in this area.