Hot Cities: Lessons from Arab Architecture
Hot Cities: Lessons from Arab Architecture
29.04.2023 – 05.11.2023
Vitra Design Museum Gallery
Curated by Ahmed and Rashid Bin Shabib
As the effects of climate change make themselves felt, cities need to adapt to the global rise of temperatures. The exhibition »Hot Cities« will look at the metropolises of the Arab-speaking world to learn how they and their inhabitants cope with the region’s harsh climate, and whether the architectural and urban design solutions found there might help us make our own environments more climate-resilient. »Hot Cities« shows how architects combine traditional vernaculars and modern technologies to respond to the challenges of the future. It presents urban case studies that provide answers to many questions now raised by climate change.
Image: Tuwaiq Palace Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Photo: Ahmed and Rashid Bin Shabib

Garden House, Tsuyoshi Tane
Garden House, Tsuyoshi Tane
Vitra Campus & Vitra Design Museum Gallery
In summer 2023, another architectural highlight will be added to the Vitra Campus when the Garden House designed by architect Tsuyoshi Tane is set up between the Umbrella House and the Oudolf Garden. The small wooden building will be surrounded by a kitchen garden for the use of Vitra employees. A viewing platform on the roof of the new building offers a fine view of the Oudolf Garden, the Umbrella House, and the entire Vitra Campus. In autumn 2023, a special exhibition at the Vitra Design Museum Gallery will present insights into Tsuyoshi Tane’s work and his Vitra Garden House project.

Iwan Baan
Iwan Baan
21.10.2023 – 03.03.2024
Vitra Design Museum
Iwan Baan is one of today’s leading photographers of architecture and urban design. His images document the growth of global megacities and portray buildings by prominent contemporary architects including Herzog & de Meuron, Rem Koolhaas, and Zaha Hadid. The first large retrospective of the Dutch photographer’s work will open at the Vitra Design Museum in autumn 2023. Baan’s vibrant realism puts the focus on people and their relationship to the built environment. His observant eye presents architecture not as an abstract ideal, but as the setting of everyday life, an organic part of the urban fabric – be it suburban sprawl or the booming metropolises of Africa and Asia. Thanks to the great scope of his vision, Baan’s works offer a broad panorama of human building that impressively demonstrates the existential importance of architecture and urban design.
Image: CCTV Headquarters, Beijing, China, OMA © Iwan Baan
