Vitra Design Museum Gallery

Opening: 17 November 2023, 6 pm

The presentation »Tsuyoshi Tane: The Garden House« at the Vitra Design Museum Gallery is dedicated to the recently constructed Tane Garden House on the Vitra Campus. With a footprint of barely 15 square metres, the house combines a rooftop viewing platform for Campus visitors and a meeting room for the gardeners who tend the grounds. Tsuyoshi Tane understood that this project was small in scale, but large in meaning. This is reflected in the Japanese architect’s unique design approach, which is based on an intensive research process that explores the local context in order to utilize traditional handicrafts as well as regional resources. The exhibition, which was conceived by the architect, presents study models, architectural mock-ups and drawings of the building, along with impressions of the close collaboration with local artisans.

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Vitra Schaudepot

The new focus topic of the Vitra Schaudepot, which will be on display from May 2022 to May 2024, is wholly devoted to colour. Following an invitation from the Vitra Design Museum, Dutch designer Sabine Marcelis has transformed the Schaudepot in one simple, sweeping gesture by sorting its roughly four hundred exhibits by colour. The installation shows the collection from new perspectives and produces fascinating cross-references between periods and styles, at the same time providing visitors with an overwhelming immersive experience. The presentation is complemented by historical and contemporary objects and documents from the museum archives that illustrate how designers from different eras approached the subject.

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Photo: Bettina Matthiessen

Vitra Schaudepot

Luis Barragán (1902–1988) is widely regarded as the most important Mexican architect of the twentieth century. Since 1996, the architect’s professional estate has been in the care of the Barragan Foundation, located in Birsfelden, near Basel in Switzerland. Over the past two decades, a small team of researchers under the leadership of architectural historian Federica Zanco has systematically evaluated and catalogued the archival documents. As part of a newly established partnership between the Barragan Foundation and the Vitra Design Museum, this material has moved to new premises on the Vitra Campus. The Barragán Archive is now located in close proximity to the Vitra Schaudepot. This includes a state-of-the-art repository for the documents, a study room for visiting researchers, and the Barragán Gallery, a thematic exhibition space. The gallery show presents drawings, photographs and other material from the Barragán Archive, together with biographical details and an illustrated chronology of modern architecture in Mexico. This ensemble of documents and supplementary information illuminates Barragán’s life and work in a larger context.

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Image: Rooftop terrace of Luis Barragán’s residence at 14 Calle Francisco Ramírez (Mexico City, 1948), photograph taken by Armando Salas Portugal in the 1960s. © Barragan Foundation / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2022

Visitors can experience the Wunderkammer exclusively as part of a public guided tour. Registration here.

Another attraction on the Vitra Campus, the »Wunderkammer« presents spellbinding mise-en-scènes featuring more than one thousand action figures from the collection of Rolf Fehlbaum, Chairman Emeritus of Vitra. This  includes robots, space toys, comic book characters, folk art, and advertising, often created by anonymous artists and designers. The majority of these objects were made after the Second World War and bear all the marks of their  period’s optimistic faith in the future. All of them are products of a pop culture that still fascinates millions of children and grown-ups today.

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Image: Objects from the Rolf Fehlbaum collection at the Wunderkammer,
photo: Bettina Matthiessen