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Vitra Museum: The Latest Architecture and News

A New Building by Kazuo Shinohara will be Added to the Vitra Campus

One of Japanese architect Kazuo Shinohara’s iconic architectures, designed under the so-called "First Style" has now been reconstructed on the Vitra Campus in Weil am Rhein. The Umbrella House, originally built in Tokyo in 1961, will serve as a venue for small gatherings on the campus, offering visitors insights on modern Japanese architecture. After the geodesic dome by Buckminster Fuller/George Howard in 1975, and a petrol station by Jean Prouvé in 1953, the project is the third historic building to be reconstructed on the Vitra Campus.

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Vitra Design Museum Explores 200 Years of Chair Design

Vitra Design Museum has debuted Chair Times, a 90-minute film that describes the history of seating furniture. Focusing on 125 objects from the collection of the Museum, the film explores the development of chairs over centuries, examining them as “portraits of their users.” Arranged according to their year of production, they are organized to form a timeline of modern seating design.

The Insignificance of Aesthetics: An Exhibition at Vitra Design Museum Adds a Context of Urgency to the Works of Victor Papanek

The Insignificance of Aesthetics: An Exhibition at Vitra Design Museum Adds a Context of Urgency to the Works of Victor Papanek - Image 3 of 4
Victor Papanek. Image Courtesy of donation from Nicolette Papanek/Victor J. Papanek Foundation

This article was originally published on Metropolis Magazine as "Design Provocateur: Revisiting the Prescient Ideas of Victor Papanek".

“Today industrial design has put murder on a mass-production basis,” declared Victor Papanek, design provocateur and critic, from the podium of a design-activist happening in 1968. “By designing criminally unsafe automobiles that kill or maim,” he roared, “by creating a whole new species of permanent garbage to clutter up the landscape, and by choosing materials and processes that pollute the air we breathe, designers have become a dangerous breed.”