Vitra Campus

On the industrial edge of Weil am Rhein, near Basel, Vitra has turned a furniture factory into one of Europe’s most entertaining architecture lessons. It began, rather dramatically, with lightning. In 1981 a strike triggered a fire that destroyed much of the production site. Insurance covered only six months of interruption, so Nicholas Grimshaw designed a replacement factory at remarkable speed. That emergency rebuild became the first chapter of the campus. Then the architects arrived. Frank Gehry completed his sculptural Vitra Design Museum in 1989. Zaha Hadid followed with the angular concrete Fire Station in 1993, her first completed building, designed for Vitra’s own brigade. The brigade was later disbanded, leaving Hadid’s severe masterpiece with a slightly comic afterlife as an exhibition and event space. Nearby, Tadao Ando created his first building outside Japan, a quiet conference pavilion partly sunk into the ground.

Herzog & de Meuron later added VitraHaus and the brick Schaudepot, while a 1950s Jean Prouvé petrol station and a Buckminster Fuller inspired dome add further surprises. Production still continues here, which is exactly why the campus works: world class architecture, design history and forklifts sharing the same address.