Vitra show depot for design collection opened

The new show depot on the Vitra Campus in Weil am Rhein near Basel.On Friday, June 3, the collector and Vitra Chairman Eremitus Rolf Fehlmann as well as the two Basel star architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron discussed with Mateo Kreis, the co-director of the Vitrag Design Museum, the new show depot that opened the same day. As a storage facility for the world's most important design furniture collection, it also makes it visible to visitors and is thus, along with the Beyeler Art Museum, another cultural beacon in the north of Basel.Model SchaulagerThe concept has an already well-known model in the Schaulager for contemporary art in the south of Basel, in Münchenstein. It was also designed by architects Herzog & de Meuron. However, the show depot is located on the Vitra Campus in Weil am Rhein, the small German city neighboring Basel. This campus is both a park for modern architecture and a manufacturing, logistics and administration center for the Swiss furniture construction and furniture trading company Vitra.Herzog & de Meuron have already realized the Vitra-Haus here, the campus visitor center. Not far from it stands the Vitra Design Museum, with which the opening of the collection of Rolf Fehlmann had begun. The trained sociologist took over the management of the company in 1977 from his father, who had already worked with famous furniture designers. This passion for furniture design was shared by the son, who himself began to collect.

Rolf Fehlmann, Vitra Chairman Hermitage, Mateo Kries, Director Vitra Design Museum, and star architects Pierre de Meuron and Jacques Herzog.A hut for the flea marketIn the discussion on June 3, Rolf Fehlmann explained that his office had already looked like a flea market in the 1980s because of the many collectibles. This only changed when Fehlmann planned a new factory hall with the US-Canadian architect and Pritzker Prize winner Frank O. Gehry. At first, Fehlmann thought that the problem could be solved with an additional shed. The Vitra Design Museum, designed by Gehry in the deconstructivist style, has long since outgrown the space available in the museum for the collection of contemporary design chairs, which now numbers over 7,000 pieces, as well as around 1,000 design lamps and other design objects. It is therefore geared to temporary exhibitions with works from the collection, each of which is specifically supplemented.Above ground UndergroundIn contrast to the iconically designed Vitra Haus, visible from afar, Rolf Fehlmann envisioned an underground showroom for his collection, devoid of any form of architectural expression, a quasi-non-architecture. For practical reasons, including financial ones, Herzog & de Meuron, together with their avowed friend Fehlmann, developed an archetypal architecture that says practically nothing about its origins, time period, or the architects.However, the Schaudepot leads to a new opening of the campus for the public towards the south to a nearby streetcar station. The site, which has become an important tourist magnet for Basel and Weil am Rhein, thus becomes more accessible to the two cities.Author: Ruedi Ulmann