Projekt Vitra

The title of the book says it all. What we have here isn't a product catalogue but a rich collage of texts, photographs, sketches, types of paper, layouts and dictionary-like lists of the designers and architects who have worked for and with Vitra in the past and will continue to do so in future.

Rolf Fehlbaum, chairman of the family company Vitra, describes the aim of this book in the following way: "We talk about this as a project, because for all those involved it is much more important than simply business. (...) It is based on the insight that our everyday world offers a great deal of potential for enjoyment, inspiration and aesthetic pleasure, and that design can release this potential. (...) The architecture park on the campus in Weil is just as typical of us as the chairs and office furniture which we manufacture. The Vitra Design Museum with its collections, archives and miniatures is just as much part of the project as the classics of the twentieth century and the interior collages which we have developed in recent years. (...) We also simultaneously move forwards and backwards in time. We preserve the heritage of our classics in new editions, exhibitions and publications, but we are also actively involved in contemporary design. And we are no less interested in ergonomics, ecology, logistics and quality assurance than we are in the anthropology of everyday living."

As if in an album showing photos of family and close friends, we leaf from elegiac cherry trees in front of the conference pavilion by Tadao Andos via a bouncing Frank Gehry testing the robustness of his board furniture to Hella Jongerius rubbing noses with an office pet model design. In addition to previously unpublished material from the Vitra archive we discover such objects as the 1954 swag-leg chair by George Nelson, which looks as if it comes fresh from the latest furniture fair, and advertising photos of the airport lounges designed by Alexander Girard in the mid-Sixties for Braniff Airlines, whose stewardesses wore uniforms by Emilio Pucci - "the end of the plain plane". And of course Amanda Lear's suspender strip on the bright red Panton Chair dated 1970 is included, together with, a few pages further on, a rendering for Herzog & de Meurons Vitra house, which will probably be completed in 2009.

Cornel Windlin and Rolf Fehlbaum have produced a highly entertaining and informative book, which has justifiably received an award as one of the 'most attractive Swiss books of 2007' in this year's competition by the Federal Department of Culture. According to the publishers Birkhäuser the awards will be presented on 7 June 2008 on the occasion of the official opening of the exhibition of the same name at Zurich's Museum of Design.

Facts
Cornel Windlin, Rolf Fehlbaum (editors)
396 pages, 795 colour illustrations, 197 b/w illustrations,
17.0 x 24.0 cm, bound with dust cover,
Publishing house: Birkhäuser, Basle, Boston, Berlin 2008
Recommended price: 64.90 CHF, 39.90 EUR
ISBN 978-3-7643-8592-7 - German
ISBN 978-3-7643-8593-4 - English