Home Stories
To add more comfort and cosiness to your home, explore our product selection to welcome the season in and keep you warm.
To add more comfort and cosiness to your home, explore our product selection to welcome the season in and keep you warm.
The Standard chair by Jean Prouvé has evolved into one of the most famous classics of the French 'constructeur'. The seat and backrest of this understated, iconic chair are available in various types of wood, and the metal frame comes in different colours.
The Soft Work Table is not just a sofa side table – it is also specifically designed for teamwork. The slender x-shaped base, which is optionally equipped with castors or glides, allows users to sit in varied positions. The top is available in a round or boat-shaped version, at heights of 45 and 71 cm. The table can be integrated in a wide range of Soft Work configurations.
This winter, we take a look behind the doors of three homes. First, we will visit the house of art collectors Karin and Xavier Donck in the old quarter of Ghent. We are then invited to the rural haven of stylist Adeline and farmer Florent Maillet. And finally, artist Paul Schrader welcomes us to his urban oasis in Hamburg, where he both lives and works. These three spaces and their interiors are as different as their residents which is reflected in the selection of Vitra products..
Lounge chairs
Jean Prouvé Collection
Comfort, softness, and an inviting appearance – these are the classic characteristics of a lounge chair. But to be truly great, a chair must offer more than just the standard elements.
The Italian designer and architect Antonio Citterio has worked with Vitra for over 40 years. ‘Making a lounge chair at Vitra in the shadow of Charles and Ray Eames is something of a designer’s nightmare.
A tanning agent extracted from olive tree leaves – a waste product of the olive harvest – is used to produce the superior-grade Leather Premium F. The entire production process is carried out with as few chemicals as possible in order to minimise the impact on the environment.
A chair by Jean Prouvé marked the beginning of furniture manufacturer Vitra’s relationship with the work of French designer Jean Prouvé. Even after more than twenty years, the collaboration with his heirs still remains active and strong: Vitra is now revising the collection with new colours and introducing a number of lesser known designs.
The colours Prouvé developed for his furniture drew on various references – from his Blé Vert, which describes the colour of young green wheat, to Gris Vermeer, which alludes to the grey tones in the work of the painter Johannes Vermeer.
The Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, Germany, is home to the world’s most extensive Jean Prouvé museum collection. It dates back to the 1980s when Rolf Fehlbaum (Chairman Emeritus at Vitra) acquired the first Jean Prouvé design, an Antony chair that he found in Paris, sparking Fehlbaum’s interest in the work of Jean Prouvé.
The Vitra Magazine features an assortment of articles, images, interviews and anecdotes. It revolves around the themes of design, architecture and culture, our products and their authors, exhibitions and past events – here you can experience the many facets of Project Vitra.
Design is a highly political profession
10 years of Tip Ton
A talk with curator Amelie Klein
Amelie Klein: When I think of robotics, it always makes me angry. Insanely angry! And depressed.
I always say that robotics – and by that, I also mean technology in general – is like a coat of paint that covers everything. It makes our lives much easier in many ways, and most of us still think it all comes for free. But upon closer inspection, we soon realise that none of it is free. Most of the technologies we use incessantly are backed by economic or even governmental interests. We get all agitated when another book comes out about the next form of superintelligence, but we don’t think about the fact that we are all sending our data into the ether every minute – becoming commodities ourselves and increasingly heading towards digital surveillance capitalism.
In conversation with Barber & Osgerby
Osgerby: At the beginning we were unsure whether it would be a commercial success, although looking at it now, it feels like a very obvious thing. At the time we weren’t sure, particularly when initial prices for tools were coming in and it looked like it might be incredibly expensive to make. It’s complicated as a production piece, because it’s a one-shot form in plastic.
Osgerby: It’s truly unlike most of our other projects. Whilst we knew what we wanted to do, we didn’t know whether it was possible. There were question marks over even really simple stuff, like the angle at which the forward tilt should be. There just wasn’t anything else like Tip Ton already out there; it was a new archetype.
