Vitra, the furniture company, have turned to a variety of major architects to design the buildings making up their manufacturing site near Basel, close to the German/Swiss/French border. As well as Frank Gehry, Alvaro Siza, Nicholas Grimshaw, Tadao Ando and Zaha Hadid are all represented, in a cross between an industrial plant and a model village. In the late 1980s, a palpable shift in Gehry’s aesthetic occurred with his first European commission: the design of two buildings for the manufacturing center of the Vitra furniture company. Gehry was asked to create a unified plan for a factory building that would sit adjacent to Nicholas Grimshaw’s 1981 factory, as well as a small museum to house company CEO Rolf Fehlbaum’s collection of approximately two hundred Modern and contemporary chairs.

The museum’s collection, focusing on furniture and interior design, is centered around the bequest of U.S. designers Charles and Ray Eames, as well as numerous works of designers such as George Nelson, Alvar Alto, Verner Panton, Dieter Rams, Jean Prove and Michael Thonet. It is one of the world’s largest collections of modern furniture design, including pieces representative of all major periods and styles from the beginning of the nineteenth century onwards. The design museum houses temporary exhibitions on themes of furniture design, and Gehry’s building makes a suitable host for them – in keeping with the theme, but – once inside – supporting, not competing with, the exhibitions.

Today, the Vitra Design Museum is internationally active as a cultural institution that has made a major contribution to the research and popular dissemination of design. The Museum presents a broad spectrum of topics on design and culture, with a special emphasis on furniture and interior design. Its activities encompass the production of exhibitions, workshops, publications, and museum products, and the maintenance of an extensive collection, an archive, and a research library. The travelling exhibitions of the Vitra Design Museum are shown at renowned partner institutions around the world.