Vitra Design Museum

Roland: The Vitra Design Museum is located in Weil am Rhein, close to the French-Swiss-German border triangle. We actually had never heard of it before when some friends suggested to meet them for a motorcycle trip and have a look at it.

So after we had picked up Sonja's Harley from the shop we - an unlikely trio of one Harley, one Burgman and a Vespa - headed towards France, followed the way upstream along the River Rhine and re-entered Germany just a few miles before the Swiss border. More on this can be found on Sonja's Blog.

Vitra is a Swiss furniture company with emphasis on design with one of their factories being located in Weil just a few miles from Basel. When a fire destroyed most of the factory in 1981, various new factory and exhibition buildings have been constructed by various architects, and this resulted in a huge variety of styles.

Eventually we did not visit the Design Museum itself, but the adjacent (free of charge) 'Vitra House' - with the charm of a giant Lego house built by a madman - where we strolled through the many different living spaces from six decades. Many designs look so familiar, that it is sometimes difficult to imagine that somebody actually had to invent these things. Others still look as strange and weird as they must have been when they first were presented to the public.

Verner Panton 1959

Unfortunately - after we returned home - I realized that my recently revived Nikon camera had a hardware problem (again!), and I had lost all pictures I had taken over the day. Luckily Sonja brought her camera, too, so at least we have a little bit to show for. But the days of my Nikon are undeniably over now!