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VitraHaus - Tittle

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Introduction:

The VitraHaus was a project initiated by the company Vitra, (a very renowned furniture company dedicated to developing healthy, intelligent, inspiring and durable solutions for the office, the home and for public spaces.) and it was designed with the purpose of displaying a presentation of the Home Collection on the Vitra Campus in Weil am Rhein, Germany. The company Herzog & de Meuron Architekten was hired to managed this project in 2006, it not only has an amazing appearance but it joins two major buildings surrounding it; the Conference Pavilion by Tadao Ando (1993) and the Vitra Design Museum by Frank Gehry (1989), making it into a very interesting design concept.

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Architects:

The Herzog & de Meuron Architekten is an architecture firm founded in Switzerland in 1978. Its principal architects are Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron. They have already been awarded the Pritzker Prize, the most prestigious honor in architecture. There are very prominent signs of contiguous space within their projects, but mainly their trademark signature is the innovations of space through the use of different materials.

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Theme:

The VitraHaus encompasses two themes; Stacked Volumes and the theme of the Archetypal house (a place where one lives). A key concept also brought back by this amazing structure is the idea of the Ur-House; it is designed around the main concern of the company, to present furnishings and objects for the house.

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Design:

The Vitra house was designed in a very simple yet intricate way. Herzog and Meuron took a simple designing concept Staking Volumes, and created a contiguous space with it. Each tube has the dimensions of a normal house that is elongated. This tube like structure goes up gradually providing those who experience the space with a 360-degree view of all sides of the house. Not only do they find interesting ways to give full apertures to the viewers, they managed to join various huge volumes and make them work with each other. The structural volumes have been shaped with an extrusion press. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Structure:

There is a total of twelve different tubes in this five story high house; it almost seems to be a chaotic structure, but in reality it is a carefully thought out utilization of space. The twelve floor slabs intersect with each other to create a three dimensional assemblage and this shows the intricacy of this structure. An interesting concept about this house is the fact that the stairs seem to unwind the different floor levels, they forcefully push individuals to travel around the space and experience every single room with a clear view of how the architecture influences the positioning of space, following the concept of Thick Thin architecture (serve and served spaces) where the different cuts in the walls are representation of utility. The walls of each space are endless, the cuts through the architecture are consistent and they provide not only a perfect conjunction of walls but also to create a “vertically oriented structure with a small footprint, which provides an overview of the landscape and the Vitra Home Selection”1

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Materials:

This structure was entirely made out of reinforced concrete, giving the 12 different floor slabs more stability and power. The exterior walls are painted with a “stucco color charcoal” that acts as a connection in between the earth and the structure. Since the main purpose of this house was to expose the furniture, the interior walls were chosen to be white. Wood was only utilized for floor slabs and the different stairs. (1)

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Inside the VitraHaus:

http://vimeo.com/11794536

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References:

Abrahams, Tim (2010). Though Vitra's new flagship showroom by Herzog and de Meuron plays on the tension between the familiar and the uncanny, the Vitrahaus' Stack construction has a profound tradition beyond its form. England: Blueprint. pp. 27. ISBN 0268-4926. (1)

Herzog & de Meuron: Vitrahaus, Weil am Rhein, Germany 2006-2009. Japan: Herzog & de Meuron. 2010. pp. 10-23. ISBN 0389-9160.(2)

Online Resources:

http://www.vitra.com/en-gb/campus/vitrahaus/architects-concept/[1]

http://www.herzogdemeuron.com/index/projects/complete-works/376-400/400-serpentine-gallery-pavilion.html

http://www.vitra.com/en-us/about/

http://www.archdaily.com/50533/vitrahaus-herzog-de-meuron/