Location: Weil-am-Rhein, Germany
Date: 1989
Features from the Web about this building:
Frank Gehry: “I love the shaping I can do when I’m sketching. And it never… occurred to me that I would do it in a building. The first thing I built of anything like that is Vitra… in Germany.”
Bob Geldof, Musician: ” I was in a band, touring Europe. I was into the fifth week and I was in that sort of twilight state that occupies most of your days when on tour… I was just looking out at the fields of Germany. And across a plain green field, suddenly this alarming structure reared up and jolted me out of this state. We got to Freiburg and I asked what was it I’d just seen back there and they said, ‘Oh that must be Vitra’.”
Rolf Fehlbaum, Chairman, Vitra: “To my knowledge it’s the first building where that new freedom, and the new movement came. The snake, for instance, that staircase is a snake, and that was something very new for me… I come from Switzerland… a very static country, a very static architecture. And I think that the attraction was that there was something strange, a bit messy, but in the end, these forces unleashed found a new order.”
