For Design Hunters™, the Vitra Home Collection represents
over 70 years of design history. It includes classics by Charles & Ray
Eames, Jean Prouvé, Verner Panton and Isamu Noguchi as well as contemporary
designs by Jasper Morrison, the Bouroullec brothers, Hella Jongerius and other
leading designers.
Behind the iconic design of the products is a lesser-known
story of how each came to be. Discovering these tales gives us even more reason
to covet these beautiful designs, so we thought we’d share them with you. Enjoy
the first of our Vitra stories…
The Vegetal Chair by Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec
While the Bouroullec brothers were designing the organic Algue design (2004) for
Vitra they became inspired by a 19th century artist who had developed a method
of growing young trees into the shape of a chair. This concept is behind the
organic form of the Vegetal (2008).
The goal was not just to design a chair that looked like it
had ‘sprouted’ but also to show the construction of the chair through an
interpretation of the natural growth process of a plant. Ronan Bouroullec says,
“Our task as designers is to find new structures and new forms of construction.
This chair is not just a motif – it is a structure”
Vitra Chairman, Rolf Fehlbaum, describes the Vegetal chair
as “The most difficult design and development he has ever been involved in”. It
took a dedicated period of four years to develop and perfect this one design…
but what a result. Beautiful Bouroullec branches.
The Vitra Home Collection is available through Space
Furniture.
Space Furniture
spacefurniture.com.au
Vitra
vitra.com