Vitra Design Museum Gallery

For the first time, the Vitra Design Museum Gallery will serve as an additional venue for the major exhibition at the Vitra Design Museum. A satellite to »Plastic: Remaking Our World« in the main building designed by Frank Gehry, »Precious Plastic« addresses the issue of recyclability and is organised around the eponymous Dutch initiative launched by Dave Hakkens, which supplies open source plans for machines that allow people to take recycling into their own hands. The display gives fascinating insights into different types of plastic and the complex technologies used for recycling and upcycling processes. These often hidden processes offer great potential as an endless source of inspiration for designers, manufacturers and anyone interested in contributing to a world with less (or better) plastic!

Image: Precious Plastic, shredded plastic;
Courtesy of Precious Plastic 

Vitra Schaudepot

The annual presentation at the Vitra Schaudepot reveals the collection of the Vitra Design Museum in a fresh light every year. The new focus topic, which will be on display from May 2022 to May 2023, 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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Key visual for the exhibition » Colour Rush!«
© Vitra Design Museum, graphic design: Judith Brugger

from 14 May 2022

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.

Opening in autumn 2021, the »Wunderkammer« on the Vitra Campus will present a collection of more than one thousand action figures including robots, space toys, comic book characters, folk art and merchandising products from the collection of former Vitra Chairman Rolf Fehlbaum. These objects owe their visual charm to the talent, invention, and sense of humor of predominantly anonymous designers. In their time, these icons of pop culture fascinated millions of children and grown-ups.

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