Vitra is more than a company, it is a design laboratory. Vitra was founded in Weil am Rhein, Germany in 1950 by Willi Fehlbaum, the owner of a furniture store in nearby Basel, Switzerland. In the following years, Fehlbaum acquired the copyright to the works of Charles and Ray Eames and George Nelson.

After a fire destroyed Vitra’s factories in 1981, the English architect Nicholas Grimshaw was called in to design a new factory. Alongside the aluminum hall, ready for production just six months after the fire, another production facility was built in 1986 by Portuguese architect Alvaro Siza. In 1989, it was Frank Gehry‘s turn to design another building next to the first two. Gehry also built the “Vitra Design Museum,” originally intended to house Rolf Fehlbaum’s private furniture collection, the owner of Vitra.

In 1993, Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid added a fire station that now houses a collection of chairs from the Design Museum. In the same year, a conference pavilion designed by Japanese architect Tadao Ando was built, Ando’s first work outside Japan. In 1994, Vitra’s administrative staff moved to new headquarters (also designed by Frank Gehry) in nearby Birsfelden, Switzerland, while Alvaro Siza added the shop building to the Weil am Rhein headquarters. It was at the same location that in 2000, the American architect Buckminster Fuller built a 60s geodesic dome, used as a congress hall, while in 2003 a service station designed by French designer Jean Prouvé also arrived.

Vitra’s production line focuses on design furniture for the office, home and public spaces. In addition to the company’s own designs, it also produces and distributes the works of designers such as Charles and Ray Eames, George Nelson, Verner Panton, Antonio Citterio, Philippe Starck, Bořek Šípek, Mario Bellini, Glen Oliver Löw, Dieter Thiel, Jasper Morrison, Alberto Meda and Jean Prouvé.