...With whom over a coffee they spoke about his work, the poetic power of his work, the story behind the iconic La Grange barn — and, of course, the new Vitra Mynt chair... How did the project for the Mynt chair for Vitra come about?...
...Whether at Vitra, Hem Frama, or &Tradition – the patterns gave minimalism a subtle, skillful break...
...But a Quixotian task Alfréd, having unwisely accepted, is, apparently we'll placed to meet: on and within the main body one finds storage space for both those objects that often from necessity, often from laziness, one stores for longer periods without ever using, and also those things that are more or less in continual use and thus must be more placed in easy reach than stored; the neck/lance with its protrusions of varying lengths provides space for hanging things on and over, whereby clothes are the obvious option, but by no means the only; while the flat upper surface of the body, which may or not be as with the back of an actual giraffe, provides a ready surface for an impromptu notebook/tablet workstation, that thing we'll all be needing in our near-future post-desk reality...
...Similarly, at each and every design week or furniture fair we invariably ask ourselves if we need ever more sectional/modular shelving and storage systems, as we stand in front of another interpretation of the concept... In terms of shelving and storage we're much harder than we are with chairs, and often decide that we don't...
It's more or less a century since the first steel tube furniture was developed, and looking around you it's relatively easy to believe that since then everything has been done, that steel tube furniture has reached its full potential. Or perhaps more...
...1 The exhibition Tsuyoshi Tane: The Garden House in the Vitra Design Museum Gallery, and the eponymous Garden House by Tsuyoshi Tane, the latest addition to the Vitra Campus in Weil am Rhein, allow one to approach not only a better appreciation of Tane's positions but also to experience how they influence and inform his approach, his works, his architecture... For all that Vitra is popularly associated with Weil am Rhein, Germany, the company's origins are to be found just across the border in Switzerland, specifically in Birsfelden on the edge of Basel, the association with Weil am Rhein being first forged in the early 1950s, a period when Vitra was still, primarily, a shop-fitting company, if one taking its first, tentative, steps into domestic interiors alongside retail interiors...
...Diaries which contain some of the most complete and detailed descriptions of Swiss society, and in which one also finds the earliest descriptions of the earliest (hi)story of the contemporary Switzerland, a, as Heidi records, nation constituted from a loosely bound collective, a cantonation, of ancient peoples, including, and amongst many, many others, the Röthlisberger, the Horgenglarus, the Usm, the Wohnbedarf, the Embru, or the Vitronians whose contemporary Commonwealth of Vitra was initially established across a number of fields on the banks of the river Birs in the north-western corner of the Toblerone cordillera... Yet it was, inarguably, the Vitronians, for all under the leadership of the benevolent Fehlbaum der Jüngere, who were the most active in terms of international exchange; not only cooperating with an American Miller by the name of Herman to introduce works and positions by the likes of, for example, Eames Office, I Samunoguchi, George Nel-son or Alexander Gi Rard into Switzerland, but also expanding the Commonwealth of Vitra to the neighbouring regions of Germany and from where they introduced the furniture of the American Miller Herman to the many peoples of Europe...
