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VITRA INTERNATIONAL
MANUFACTURING FACILITY AND DESIGN MUSEUM
Weil am Rhein, Germany 1987–89
In the late 1980s, a palpable shift in Gehry's
aesthetic occurred with his first European
commission: the design of two buildings for the
manufacturing center of the Vitra furniture company.
Gehry was asked to create a unified plan for a
factory building that would sit adjacent to Nicholas
Grimshaw's 1981 factory, as well as a small museum to
house company CEO Rolf Fehlbaum's collection of
approximately two hundred Modern and contemporary
chairs. The resulting design departed from the
disparate layering of geometries and informal
materials common to Gehry's southern California
structures and evidences a shift toward more
organically sculptural forms.
The angularity of Gehry's previous structures was
broken at Vitra by his use of the curve. Baroque arcs
and gentle spirals imply collective movement,
responding to the dynamic nature of the manufacturing
center. Even the rectilinear factory is whisked into
the action by the undulating ramps that flank it and
visually correspond to the curvilinear museum. The
sloping plaster and stucco forms recall Le
Corbusier's iconic chapel Notre-Dame-du-Haut
(1950–55), an important architectural landmark
for Gehry located nearby in Ronchamp, France. The
zinc rooftops of Gehry's museum and factory work in
tandem with Grimshaw's aluminum-clad building to
loosely unify the campus, yet are varied enough in
style to work with more recent architectural
additions.
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