MY MAGICAL ATTIC: VITRA – DESIGN, ARCHITECTURE, COMMUNICATION AT PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ARTS

VITRA – DESIGN, ARCHITECTURE, COMMUNICATION: A EUROPEAN PROJECT

WITH AMERICAN ROOTS AT PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ARTS

November 22, 2014 - April 26, 2015

VITRA – DESIGN, ARCHITECTURE, COMMUNICATION: A EUROPEAN PROJECT WITH AMERICAN ROOTS AT PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ARTS

November 22, 2014 - April 26, 2015

Perelman Building

The Philadelphia Museum of Art is presenting Vitra—Design, Architecture, Communication, an exhibition exploring the story of Vitra, the family-owned Swiss furniture company, from its American roots and distinguished design collaborations to its architectural commissions and educational outreach. The exhibition of some 120 works includes furniture, design objects, publications, models, publications, and videos divided into the following sections: American Roots; Communications; Architecture/Site; Products/Designers; and Vitra Design Museum, Collections/Archives.

In conjunction with the exhibition, Rolf Fehlbaum, Vitra’s Chairman Emeritus, will be honored by Collab, the group for modern and contemporary design at the Museum. He receives Collab’s 2014 Design Excellence Award on November 21. Fehlbaum founded the Vitra Design Museum with his collection of modern and contemporary furniture and then expanded its activities to include traveling exhibitions, publications, and workshops. He created Vitra Edition, a program of experimental pieces such as Ron Arad’s looping steel Well-Tempered Chair (1986) and Philippe Starck’s surreal W.W. Stool (1990), which will be included in the exhibition, and commissioned internationally renowned architects to design buildings for the Vitra Campus in Weil am Rhein.

The exhibition includes contemporary products in addition to historic objects and archival material from the Vitra Design Museum that represent the firm’s American roots. These include a plywood toy elephant by Charles and Ray Eames, a group of Alexander Girard’s Wooden Dolls, and George Nelson’s 1948 furniture catalogue for Herman Miller.

Vitra’s founders, Willi and Erika Fehlbaum, began licensing furniture from Herman Miller for the European market with designs by Charles and Ray Eames, George Nelson, and Alexander Girard in 1957. The Eameses view of design as the “recognition of need,” their warning against “stylistic excess,” and their understanding of the connections between people, ideas, and objects have served as Vitra’s guiding principles ever since. The company continues to manufacture such classics, as well as new products by leading international designers, from Verner Panton and Antonio Citterio to Jasper Morrison and Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec, which are on view.

Rolf Fehlbaum joined the family business in 1977. He launched Vitra’s signature architecture program by commissioning British architect Nicholas Grimshaw to design new factory buildings when a substantial part of Vitra’s manufacturing facilities were destroyed in a fire in 1981. Other commissions followed, among them the Vitra Design Museum by Frank Gehry, a fire station by Zaha Hadid, a conference pavilion by Tadao Ando, VitraHaus by Herzog & de Meuron, a factory building by SANAA, and Balancing Tools, a large-scale outdoor sculpture by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen.

ABOUT ROLF FEHLBAUM

Rolf Fehlbaum (born April 6, 1941, Basel) studied social sciences at the University of Freiburg in Breisgau and later in Munich, Bern, and Basel, completing his doctoral thesis on Utopian Socialism in 1967. Upon completion of his studies, he worked as an editor and producer for the Bavaria Film Company and led education and training at the Bavarian Chamber of Architects, before joining Vitra in 1977. Fehlbaum has received numerous honors and awards, including an honorary doctorate from the Royal College of Art in London (2010), an honorary Fellowship of the Royal Institute of British Architects (2010), and a placement on the Pritzker Architecture Prize jury from 2004 to 2010.

CURATOR

Kathryn Bloom Hiesinger, The J. Mahlon Buck, Jr. Family Senior Curator of European Decorative Arts after 1700

ABOUT COLLAB

Collab is a volunteer group that supports the Museum’s modern and contemporary design collection and programs. Now among the most important in the country, the collection of more than 2,000 objects ranges from appliances and furniture to ceramics, glass, posters, wallpapers, and lighting. Each year, Collab honors a design professional who has made significant contributions to the field. In addition, the group offers its annual Student Design Competition to challenge college students to be inspired by design. This year’s competition culminates in a display of selected student works in the Great Stair Hall Balcony of the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s main building through November 21, 2014.

http://www.philamuseum.org/exhibitions/814.html

EAMES ELEPHANT 1945

DESIGNED & MADE BY CHARLES EAMES ( AMERICAN 1907 – 1978 )

Dimension: 41.9 × 41.3 × 78.7 cm

CHARLES & RAY EAMES

Charles Eames, born 1907 in St. Louis, Missouri, studied architecture at Washington University in St. Louis and opened his own office together with Charles M. Gray in 1930. In 1935 he founded another architectural firm with Robert T. Walsh. After receiving a fellowship in 1938 from the Cranbrook Academy of Art, he moved to Michigan and joined the faculty the following year. In 1940, he and Eero Saarinen won first prize for their joint entry in the competition 'Organic Design in Home Furnishings' organised by the New York Museum of Modern Art. During the same year, Eames became head of the department of industrial design at Cranbrook, and in 1941 he married Ray Kaiser.
Ray Eames was born as Bernice Alexandra Kaiser in Sacramento, California, in 1912. She attended Bennett College in Millbrook, New York, and continued her studies in painting under Hans Hofmann through 1937. During this year she exhibited her work in the first exhibition of the American Abstract Artists group at the Riverside Museum in New York. She matriculated at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1940 and married Charles Eames the following year.
From 1941 to 1943, Charles and Ray Eames designed and developed stretchers and leg splints made of moulded plywood, and in 1946 they exhibited their experimental moulded plywood furniture at the New York Museum of Modern Art. The Herman Miller Company in Zeeland, Michigan, subsequently began to produce the Eameses' furniture designs. Charles and Ray participated in the 1948 'Low-Cost Furniture' competition at MoMA, and they built the Eames House in 1949 as their own private residence. Around 1955 they began to focus more on their extensive work as photographers and filmmakers, and in 1964 Charles received an honorary doctoral degree from the Pratt Institute in New York.
The Eames Office designed the IBM Pavilion for the 1964-65 World's Fair in New York, and the year 1969 offered the opportunity to participate in the exhibition 'Qu'est-ce que le design?' at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. In 1970-71, Charles was appointed as the Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard University. MoMA again presented an exhibition of the Eameses' work, entitled 'Furniture by Charles Eames', in 1973. Charles Eames died in St. Louis in 1978; Ray's death followed in 1988.
Charles and Ray Eames have had a profound and lasting influence on Vitra. The company's activity as a furniture manufacturer began in 1957 with the production of their designs. Yet it is not just the products of Charles and Ray Eames that have left their mark on Vitra. Even today, their design philosophy continues to profoundly shape the company's values, orientation and goals.

http://www.vitra.com/en-un/corporation/designer/details/charles-ray-eames

LA CHAIS 1948 DESIGNED BY CHARLES & RAY EAMES

PLYWOOD GROUP 1945 – 1946

LOUNGE CHAIR & OTTOMON 1956

ORGANIC CHAIR BY CHARLES EAMES & EERO SAARINEN 1940

CHARLES EAMES & EERO SAARINEN

WOODEN DOOLS 1963

Made by Vitra GmbH, Basel, Switzerland

Solid fir, Hand-Painted (Lent by Vitra)

Photograph by Marc Eggimann © Vitra ( www.vitra.com )

AC 4 CHAIR 2008 DESIGN BY ANTONIO CITTERIO

ANTONIO CITTERIO

Antonio Citterio was born in the Italian city of Meda in 1950. He graduated in architecture from the Politecnico di Milano and opened his own studio in 1972, focusing mainly on industrial design. In 1999, Antonio Citterio and Patricia Viel formed 'Antonio Citterio and Partners' as a multidisciplinary office for architecture, industrial design and graphics. The firm develops projects for residential and commercial complexes and industrial facilities, plans the restructuring and conservation of public buildings, and produces interior designs for work areas, offices, showrooms and hotels. In addition to their further activities in the sector of corporate communications, image and identity, Citterio and Partners also design installation fixtures and graphics.
Antonio Citterio currently works with prominent Italian and international firms such as Ansorg, Arclinea, Axor/Hansgrohe, Aubrilam, B&B Italia, Flexform, Flos, Fusital, Guzzini, Iittala, Inda, Kartell, Maxalto, Sanitec Group/Pozzi Ginori, Simon Urmet, Technogym, Tre Più and Vitra.
He has received numerous awards, including the Compasso d'Oro in 1987 and 1995. The product designs Mobil and Battista, which Citterio designed for Kartell, belong to the permanent collection of the New York Museum of Modern Art. Mobil, Battista, Dolly, Gastone and Oxo are part of the standing exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Tools Citterio 2000, his tableware series for Iittala, is displayed in the permanent design exhibition at the Chicago Museum of Architecture and Design together with the Axor Citterio bath fixtures created for Hansgrohe.
In 2004, the Italian publishing house Electa issued a monograph entitled «Antonio Citterio Industrial Design». The English edition was produced by Phaidon Press. Another monographic work, written by Luigi Prestinenza Puglisi and published by Edilstampa under the title «Antonio Citterio», appeared in 2005. Antonio Citterio has served as a professor on the architectural faculty at the Università della Svizzera italiana since 2006.
In January 2007, Citterio's design for a daycare facility in Verona for GlaxoSmithKline was nominated for the Mies van der Rohe Award by the jury and included together with 32 other projects in the accompanying catalogue and exhibition. In July of the same year, the Italian publisher Skira produced the monograph «Antonio Citterio: Architecture and Design».
Also in 2007, Citterio was named 'Royal Designer for Industry' by the London-based Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce. He is also a member of the Italian Design Council, which was established by the Italian Ministry for Culture.
In 2009 the office received the 'US award Workplace: qualità e innovazione' from the magazine «US-ufficiostile» for the design of Ermenegildo Zegna's corporate headquarters.

http://www.vitra.com/en-un/corporation/designer/details/antonio-citterio

REPOS 2011 DESIGN BY ANTONIO CITTERIO

GRAND REPOS & OTTOMAN 2011 DESIGN BY ANTONIO CITTERIO

AC 4 CHAIR 2008 DESIGN BY ANTONIO CITTERIO

HEART CONE CHAIR 1959 DESIGN BY VERNER PANTON

VERNER PANTON

Verner Panton, born 1926 in Gamtofte, Denmark, studied at Odense Technical College before enrolling at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen as an architecture student.
He worked from 1950-52 in the architectural firm of Arne Jacobsen, and founded an independent studio for architecture and design in 1955. His furniture designs for the firm Plus-linje attracted attention with their geometric forms. In the following years Panton created numerous designs for seating furniture and lighting.
His passion for bright colours and geometric patterns manifested itself in an extensive range of textile designs. By fusing the elements of a room—floor, walls, ceiling, furnishings, lighting, textiles, wall panels made of enamel or plastic—into a unified gesamtkunstwerk, Panton's interior installations have attained legendary status. The most famous examples are the "Visiona" ship installations for the Cologne Furniture Fair (1968 and 1970), the Spiegel publishing headquarters in Hamburg (1969) and the Varna restaurant in Aarhus (1970).
Panton's collaboration with Vitra began in the early 1960s, when the firm decided to develop what became his best-known design, the Panton Chair, which was introduced in 1967. This was also the first independently developed product by Vitra.
Verner Panton died in 1998 in Copenhagen. Vitra's re-edition of designs by Panton, as well as the retrospective of his work mounted by the Vitra Design Museum in 2000, bear witness to the special relationship between Vitra and Verner Panton.

http://www.vitra.com/en-un/corporation/designer/details/verner-panton

You may visit Verner Panton’s comprehensive exhibition news at Vitra Design Museum to click below link.

http://mymagicalattic.blogspot.com.tr/2014/04/verner-panton-at-vitra-design-museum.html

PANTOM CHAIR 1959 - 1960 DESIGN BY VERNER PANTON

LIVING TOWER 1969 DESIGN BY VERNER PANTON

AMOEBE HIGHBACK 1970 DESIGN BY VERNER PANTON

ZAHA HADID

MESA DESIGN BY ZAHA HADID

PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ARTS

HELLA JONGERIUS

Hella Jongerius, born 1963 in de Meern, Netherlands, studied design at the Industrial Design Academy in Eindhoven. She subsequently attracted international attention through her work for the Dutch design label Droog Design.
She taught at the Design Academy in Eindhoven from 1998-99, serving as head of the department Living/Atelier from 2000-04.
In 2000, she founded the design studio JongeriusLab in Rotterdam, where she creates, produced and markets many of her designs – primarily dishware, vases, textiles and furnishings.
Hella Jongerius' work often blurs the borders between design and handicrafts, or art and technology. Along with Jasper Morrison and Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec, Hella Jongerius has made major contributions to the steadily growing Vitra Home Collection.

http://www.vitra.com/en-un/corporation/designer/details/hella-jongerius

You may visit Hella Jongerius’ designs comprehensive news of Vitra East River Chair and Vitra Polder Sofa to click below links.

http://mymagicalattic.blogspot.com.tr/2014/04/vitra-east-river-chair-design-by-hella.html

http://mymagicalattic.blogspot.com.tr/2013/07/vitra-polder-sofa-design-by-hella.html

EAST RIVER CHAIR 2014

Seat: Laminated, Upholstery: Polyurethane Foam With Fabric Cover

Coating: Leather and Fabrics, Frame: Natural Oak Wood With Legs Cross of

Powder - Coated Steel or Dark Oak With Legs Cross of Powder - Coated Stell

Dimensions: 74 × 71 × 64 cm. Height of Seat: 40 cm.

Photography by Marc Eggimann © Vitra ( www.vitra.com )

POLDER SOFA 2005 DESIGNED BY HELLA JONGERIUS

KONSTANTIN GRCIC

Konstantin Grcic, born 1965 in Munich, completed an apprenticeship as a cabinetmaker at Parnham College in Dorset before studying industrial design at the Royal College of Art in London.
After working for Jasper Morrison in London from 1990-91, he established his own office in Munich in 1991. "Konstantin Grcic Industrial Design" is both studio and workshop. In addition to designing furnishings, objects and lighting for prominent manufacturers, Grcic also teaches at various institutions.
His products are characterized by a formal simplicity that is reduced to the essentials. However, the functionality of Grcic's work, which is oriented on human needs and combined with a sharp wit and maximum formal stringency, distinguishes it from minimalism as a mere fashion trend.

http://www.vitra.com/en-un/corporation/designer/details/konstantin-grcic

You may visit Konstantin Grcic’s comprehensive exhibition news at Vitra Design Museum to click below link.

http://mymagicalattic.blogspot.com.tr/2014/03/konstantin-grcic-panorama-at-vitra.html

WAVER 2011 DESIGN BY KONSTANTIN GRCIC

BALL CLOCK 1948 – 1960

Metal & Brass

Diameter: 33 cm.

Photograph by Andreas Sütterlin © Vitra ( www.vitra.com )

PETAL CLOCK DESIGNED BY GEORGE NELSON

SUNBURST CLOCK DESIGNED BY GEORGE NELSON

JASPER MORRISON

Jasper Morrison, born 1959 in London, studied at the Royal College of Art in London. He pursued further studies at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin on a fellowship. In 1986 he founded his own design studio in London.
Two early projects that gained attention were room installations, "Reuters News Center" for Documenta 8 in Kassel, and "Some New Items for the Home" at the DAAD Gallery in Berlin. The stringent concepts of these projects, which featured starkly reductive objects, represented a reaction to the formal excesses of postmodernism.
Jasper Morrison became a leading figure of "New Simplicity", a movement that advocated a more modest and also more serious approach to design. In addition to furniture, he has also created lamps, home accessories, textiles, a tram system for the city of Hanover, Germany, and a bus shelter for the Vitra Campus in Weil am Rhein.
His joint 2006 exhibition with the Japanese designer Naoto Fukasawa, entitled "Super Normal", put forth provocative theses that once again stimulated great discussion. Along with Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec and Hella Jongerius, Jasper Morrison has made essential contributions to the steadily growing Vitra Home Collection.

http://www.vitra.com/en-un/corporation/designer/details/jasper-morrison

HAL ARMCHAIR STUDIO 2014 DESIGN BY JASPER MORRISON

CORK FAMILY 2014 DESIGN BY JASPER MORRISON

MONOPOD 2008 DESIGN BY JASPER MORRISON

HAL ARMCHAIR WOOD 2014 DESIGN BY JASPER MORRISON

RON ARAD ( ISRAELI 1951 )

WELL – TEMPERED CHAIR 1986

High - Grade Sheet Steel, Thumb Screws

Dimensions: 80 × 98.5 × 80 Height of Seat: 48 cm.

FRANK GEHRY CARDBOARD ARMCHAIR)

WIGGLE SIDE CHAIR 1972/2005

Corrugated Cardboard, Hardboard

Dimensions: 87 × 36.2 × 61 cm. Height of Seat : 43.2 cm

FRANK GEHRY

Frank Gehry, born 1929 in Toronto, Canada, earned a degree in architecture from the University of Southern California before studying urban planning at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design.
In 1962 he founded the architectural firm Frank Gehry & Associates in Los Angeles. He designed the cardboard furniture series Easy Edges between 1969-72. Over the years he has taught at several universities, including Harvard and Yale, where he served as Charlotte-Davenport-Professorship of Architecture (1982, 1985, 1987-89).
Gehry has received numerous honorary doctorates from institutions including the University of Toronto, the University of Southern California, Yale University, Harvard University and the University of Edinburgh.
Projects for Vitra:
1994 Vitra Center (Vitra's Headquarters), Birsfelden near Basel
1989 Vitra Design Museum and manufacturing facility, Gehry’s first building in Europe, Vitra Campus, Weil am Rhein

http://www.vitra.com/en-un/corporation/designer/details/frank-gehry

You may visit Frank Gehry’s design news of Vitra Wiggle Side Chair to click below link.

http://mymagicalattic.blogspot.com.tr/2014/01/wiggle-chair-design-by-frank-o-gehry.html

WIGGLE SIDE CHAIR 1972/2005 B ( DETAIL )

THE MOON CHAIR DESIGN BY SHIRO KURAMATA

GEORGE NELSON No. 5670 / MARSHMALLOW SOFA, 1955

POTENCE LIGHT DESIGN BY JEAN PROUVE 1950

JEAN PROUVE

Jean Prouvé, born 1901 in Paris, was trained as a metal artisan under Emile Robert, Enghien und Szabo in Paris. In 1924 he opened his own workshop in Nancy and began to produce his first furnishings made of formed sheet steel in 1925. He was a founding member of the Union des Artistes Modernes (UAM) in 1930. In the following year he established his own manufacturing firm, Les Ateliers Jean Prouvé. During the 1930s, the company produced numerous furniture designs, as well as some of the first prefabricated architectural elements, including components for the Maison du Peuple in Clichy (in collaboration with the architects Beaudoin and Lods), whose steel-and-glass structure attracted a great deal of attention.
Due to the scarcity of steel during the Second World War, Prouvé constructed wood furniture and developed simple houses made out of prefabricated parts. Active in the French Résistance, Prouvé was elected mayor of Nancy after the city was liberated. He designed and constructed residential buildings for the homeless. In 1947 he established the Maxéville factory, a facility of 25,000 square meters in which furnishings, prefabricated homes and schools were produced by 200 employees. In order to meet the increasing demand for furniture, this division came under the direction of Steph Simon as a separate division with exclusive marketing rights in 1949. Due to disagreements with the majority shareholders, Jean Prouvé left the company in 1953. He designed and built his own residence in 1954. After working as head of the construction office of the Compagnie Industrielle de Matériel de Transport (CIMT) in Paris between 1957-68, Prouvé ran his own architectural consulting firm in Paris from 1968-84.
He taught as professor at the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers (CNAM) from 1957-70. As chairman of the jury for the Centre Pompidou architectural competition in 1971, he played a major role in selecting the design of Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers.
Between 1980-84, Prouvé again turned his attention to the further development of his furniture designs. He died in Nancy in 1984. In many of his works, Jean Prouvé achieved the goal of uniting functional requirements, the honest use of materials and economical concerns with the complex demands of mass production. Beginning in 2002, in close collaboration with the Prouvé family, Vitra has devoted itself to the re-edition of numerous designs by this great constructeur.

http://www.vitra.com/en-un/corporation/designer/details/jean-prouve

EM TABLE BY JEAN PROUVE 1950

STANDARD CHAIR BY JEAN PROUVE 1934 – 1950

EDWARD BARBER & JAY OSGERBY

Edward Barber, born in Shrewsbury in 1969, and Jay Osgerby, born in Oxford in 1969, studied architecture and interior design as fellow students at the Royal College of Art in London. In 1996, they founded their own studio for design and architecture under the name Barber & Osgerby. Since that time, their collaborative work has probed the interface between industrial design, furniture design and architecture.

http://www.vitra.com/en-un/corporation/designer/details/barber-osgerby