Vitra Design Museum

Our homes are an expression of the way we live, they shape our everyday routines and fundamentally affect our well-being. With the major exhibition »Home Stories: 100 Years, 20 Visionary Interiors« the Vitra Design Museum aims to reopen the conversation about the contemporary private interior and its evolution. In a captivating narrative leading visitors backwards in time, the exhibition will highlight important societal, political, urban, and technical shifts that have shaped the design and the use of the Western interior over the last 100 years. From current issues facing the domestic domain — such as the efficient use of dwindling urban space to the blurring of work-life boundaries — the journey includes our fascination with loft-living in the 1970s, the shift from formal to informal dwelling in the 1960s, the rise of household appliances in the 1950s, and the introduction of open-space planning in the 1920s. The exhibition is organized around 20 iconic interiors by architects such as Adolf Loos, Finn Juhl, Lina Bo Bardi, and Assemble; artists like Andy Warhol or Cecil Beaton, as well as interior designer Elsie de Wolfe.

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Key Visual for the exhibition »Home Stories«, Illustration: Daniel Streat, Visual Fields, © Vitra Design Museum; Lina Bo Bardi, Casa de Vidro, São Paulo, 1952, © Instituto Bardi / photo: Francisco Albuquerque

Vitra Design Museum Gallery

Not all objects are designed by professional designers. Many authorless everyday objects have continuously evolved in their form, function and materiality over the centuries. Some changed only in detail, others underwent rapid modifications triggered by social, political or technological upheavals. Fascinated by the processes that shape and change everyday objects, the French design collective »Collections Typologie« explores the history, production, and formal language of objects such as wine bottles, cork stoppers, or the metal balls used in boules or pétanque. The exhibition »Typology: An Ongoing Study of Everyday Items« at the Vitra Design Museum Gallery presents the results of their research, including their newest work on wooden crates. The collective's unique perspective invites us to take a fresh look at previously ignored parts of our object culture and encourages us to question our relationship to everyday objects – especially in the light of current debates on resource consumption and lifestyle choices.

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Collections Typologie and Anniina Koivu, Typologie – the cork stopper and the wine bottle, 2019 © Francesco Carreda

Vitra Schaudepot

At the Vitra Schaudepot, which is designed by Herzog & de Meuron, the Vitra Design Museum presents key objects from its extensive collection, creating one of the largest permanent exhibitions and research sites on contemporary furniture design. Today the collection of the Vitra Design Museum encompasses a total of around 20 000 objects, with some 7000 pieces of furniture, more than 1000 lighting objects and numerous archives, as well as the Collection of the Eames Office, or the estates of Verner Panton and Alexander Girard. Although the main museum building by Frank Gehry (1989) was originally conceived to house the collection, the museum utilises the space to stage major temporary exhibitions. The construction of the Schaudepot allows for a permanent presentation of the collection, while offering a diverse educational programme.

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Visitors can experience the Black Box exclusively as part of a public guided tour. Registration: info(at)design-museum.de, max. 10 participants.

The Vitra Campus has a exhibition space: in one of the houses at the southern entrance, a Black Box has been installed which holds the collection of international toy robots belonging to Vitra Chairman Emeritus Rolf Fehlbaum. The presentation encompasses robots and figures of astronauts from the years 1937 to 1968. Many of them bear witness to the technological optimism of an age, when robotics and space travel were still largely fiction. Some of the selected objects are shown with the original packaging, which is often no less spectacular than the artefacts themselves. A number of the robots are seen in motion on video screens, while others are exhibited on turntable displays. The staging of the objects draws the viewer into a dark, minimalist dream world. The exhibition was conceived in collaboration with Fifo Stricker, Rolf Fehlbaum’s friend and fellow collector. Dieter Thiel designed the architecture of the Black Box, and the scenography was developed together with French designer Ronan Bouroullec.

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