One of the things on my must see list in Europe was Vitra Campus. For the non-designers out there Vitra is a Swiss furniture company that manufactures furniture from designers such as Charles & Ray Eames, Hella Jongerius, Le Corbusier, Verner Panton, Isamu Noguchi and Phillippe Starck. Basically it's really nice furniture that I would love for myself but for the moment have to settle for trying to convince clients that they love it too!
Vitra has set up a campus in Germany (a few kilometres from the Swiss border) which includes factories, a show room (Vitra Haus), a conference centre, a museum, a fire station and some structures that they 'rescued' and are using for display areas.
When we arrived at the campus we joined an Architecture tour and were shown around many of the buildings on the campus. It was a little bit tedious as it was a very hot day and the tour was given in German and then English but we did get to see some interesting things…
Ali.
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| 'Bucky' Dome |
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| Petrol Station |
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| The bridge between the two factory buildings is lowered during bad weather to act as a shelter |
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| The Zaha Hadid fire station |
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| Sculpture with Tadao Ando Conference Pavillion in background |
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| Design Museum |
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| The campus was covered in cherry trees. Yummy |
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| Can you see what I see? |
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| Well it's good to see they have a sense of humour at Vitra |
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| Vitra Haus |
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| View of cherry orchard from Vitra Haus |
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| View of campus from Vitra Haus |
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| Rob on a Woolly Mammoth chair |
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| Mr Big Boss Man |
Tee hee heee, "kunst"...
ReplyDeleteThe Vitra Dome is a Charter-Sphere Dome designed by architect and engineer TC Howard of Synergetics, Inc and Charter Industries, Inc. It is NOT geodesic and Buckminster Fuller did not collaborate on it's design. Vitra bought this Charter-Sphere dome used and wrongly credit Bucky.
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