Vitra’s Chairman Rolf Fehlbaum and renowned architect Jacques Herzog discuss the idea of a “pile of houses”, the abstraction of colour and the importance of a rain drop with Abitare’s editors Stefano Boeri, Anniina Koivu and Giovanna Silva.
Stefano Boeri Let’s start with your choice of a monochrome colour, which indiscriminately covers the entire building and which stems from the desire to emphasize the abstractness of the architecture…
Jacques Herzog We were looking more closely at the materialization of the idea of abstraction. Abstract sounds good in practice. For example polymer-based materials can be easily distributed. But if you look at the built results, you will see that it often looks quite shabby. These “all over” materials don’t seem to age well. So we had to look at something more traditional, yet without all the implications linked to more traditional architecture. We wanted to make the building as abstract as possible with only a hint of figurative memory.
Stefano Boeri Did you arrive immediately to dark grey? By definition, white is the colour linked to abstraction.
Rolf Fehlbaum Yes, the building was initially thought to be white following the idea of an abstract style with an all-encompassing surface.
Jacques Herzog We have not used “white” in our work until recently, until I built an all-white house for my family in the south. The white is made from plaster and white paint that can be renewed repeatedly. Though contemporary maintenance issues make it difficult to create public buildings in white – and white seems to work as a building material only when it is new like a freshly ironed white shirt.
Rolf Fehlbaum Yes, white needs to be crisp.
Stefano Boeri And so, Jacques, you’ve decided to use bitumen, a material already widely experienced by your studio in the past…
Jacques Herzog Yes, we have used dark grey bitumen boards. For a while we considered using black. But black was a problem for thermal reasons. It attracts heat, which then results in cracks. Also we found black too pretentious, too much like art. Asphalt boards age well… like rural or industrial shacks… As it ages, our building will differentiate itself increasingly from the white ones on the campus.
Rolf Fehlbaum But, in a small building like Gehry’s Design Museum, it is still possible to use this colour. He was happy to realize a white building, especially because in California the techniques needed to create such high quality work at a reasonable cost were not available.
Jacques Herzog Gehry’s Design Museum is an iconic part of this campus. For us, it was important right from the beginning to avoid any sort of competition between our two buildings. As our building is taller it seemed appropriate that it be moved further away so that it didn’t overwhelm the Design Museum…
Rolf Fehlbaum The key question is the relationship between the new building and the other ones. I am always shocked when someone speaks of the Vitra campus as a collection of architectural buildings. This was never the original intention and this place has always been perceived as an ensemble. Each building has to incorporate all the other buildings. This is also why we backed off from Gehry’s building and placed a garden in between – in order to avoid conflict. There can be dialogue but no conflict.
Jacques Herzog The whole ensemble on the campus is rather low-rise – and this is also true of Frank’s building if it’s seen in proportion. We wanted our building to relate to the surrounding landscape – something that has not been done before on the site. That’s why the building had to have several floors.
Anniina Koivu So your new VitraHaus became a landmark. A symbol of the site.
Jacques Herzog Well, yes, it needs to be tall to allow for views of the beautiful and ancient landscape. The street in front of the entrance dates back to Roman times and this region is the warmest part of Germany – it is often called the Toscana of Germany – where wine is grown and cherry trees bloom early in spring. Cherry trees are also at the heart of the landscape plan: a real agricultural landscape that surrounds the new building.
Anniina Koivu At night, the building is even more astonishing with its large illuminated shopping windows which are like faces hovering in front of a dark sky. Was this effect already planned during the design process?
Jacques Herzog We always try to imagine buildings, and think about how they will look under different light conditions. But the real thing still surprises us… positively or negatively. Here at Vitra the night condition work really well because there is very little light around the building, so the dark facade completely blends in with the black of the night.
Stefano Boeri When did you come up with the concept of the stacked houses?
Rolf Fehlbaum It was in the architects’ mind from the very beginning. And we never questioned it… The VitraHaus was a very linear project.
Jacques Herzog As a formal strategy, we took a traditional shape that has existed for thousands of years: the house – which we then stacked in different ways. We piled it up, so it clashed, spaces that are entirely new and unexpected are created from that process – and this is without us being sculpturally active in the traditional sense of the artist, we are “innocent” in that respect.
Stefano Boeri A question about the structural concept of the building: does it derive from the assembly of independent volumes or from the sculptural variation of one single volume?
Jacques Herzog It is all in concrete. If there was one moment of doubt, it was when we saw the concrete structure for the first time. And we wondered whether the building shouldn’t remain a concrete sculpture. In this way – like with the Beijing stadium or the Prada store in Tokyo – the space, the structure and the ornament would have been the same thing. But for thermal and structural reasons, we couldn’t leave it like this. Intellectually, as well, we weren’t particularly fond of the idea of using an exposed naked structure for this building. That’s why we stepped away from this possibility.
Anniina Koivu Besides the overall material, you developed a very interesting solution for the drainage, which supposedly turns the building into a champagne fountain when it rains.
Jacques Herzog Yes, we often tried to avoid conventional gutters in order to involve the natural flow of rain water in the design concept of a building. Some projects are literally based around this idea like the artist studio we built for and with Rémy Zaugg in Mulhouse. The wooden house in the backyard of Hebelstrasse in Basel has a long fin on the roof, about a meter or so away from the edge, so that some water freely falls down the edge and creates a nice water curtain. It reminds of the movies of that great Japanese film maker…
Giovanna Silva …like Yasujiro Ozu?
Jacques Herzog Yes, him. Rain drops are an important element of the architectural setting. In conventional buildings rain is considered as an enemy that has to be kept away and be made invisible.
Stefano Boeri The central courtyard of the building is a sort of public vertical patio, which almost disappears as soon as one moves into the building …
Rolf Fehlbaum I was even worried for a moment that the central space might be too sombre.
Jacques Herzog …where as we always knew that it spatially would become the most convincing part…
Rolf Fehlbaum Yes, I see this now. Luckily, we were able to discuss things.
Jacques Herzog You trusted us – as you probably trusted all the architects you had been working with on the campus. The dialogue with you, Rolf, is very interesting for an architect.
Stefano Boeri Internally the building is a kind of labyrinth – twisting around the courtyard –, which connects the interior spaces and furnishings with sudden visions of the landscape outside … it is a perceptual experience on the move…
Jacques Herzog An alternative idea would have been a loft like space, a kind of supermarket, where the same programme could have been installed with a rectangular grid structure.
Rolf Fehlbaum This is what most of the places for furniture sale are like. Places which need additional separation, because it is unbearable to look through an infinite field of furniture.
Jacques Herzog …like IKEA…
Stefano Boeri It is as if your idea of composition has generated a generic device of independent spaces, which is beyond your control…
Rolf Fehlbaum People come in and take a tour – we recommend taking the elevator to the top floor and then working your way down –, which is a real experience of the space as well as of the content. You pass through spaces, which are sometimes intimate, sometimes small, even corners. Others create the impression of actual rooms where you can feel at home. Then there are more generous or monumental areas, which are used for exhibitions and which can be interesting, sometimes even strange.
Stefano Boeri The VitraHaus is a fluid space but is also the place where you can admire a collection of extraordinary products of industrial design… How did you manage to indulge Rolf ’s obsession for cataloguing objects?
Rolf Fehlbaum It is not a museum. We have created forms of electronic interaction with touch screens on the history of design and the products, there are assistants and we have a colour lab, Hella Jongerius’ “colour kitchen”. Basically, you can find your own place within the “houses”, where you can choose between a more colourful and a more abstract world. So everything should be tactical, usable, except the one “house” with the chairs.
Anniina Koivu …which is like a small jewel box hidden away at the end of the general walk.
Rolf Fehlbaum It is part of the loop but it should not be as accessible. It shouldn’t be something you simply walk through but you need to go to. It is a different story.
Jacques Herzog …a bit like a wine cellar…
Rolf Fehlbaum …or like the citation of a collector who has collected thousands of chairs. How did we get to the final form?
Jacques Herzog From outside in and from inside out. The inclined top of the wall bends inside so that chairs and other objects can be displayed on an inclined surface for better visibility for the visitor. The inclined lower part of the wall bends outside so that it makes room for the large wooden bench outside.
Rolf Fehlbaum This building is not at all static. In a few years time, we might use this particular space for something completely different…
Jacques Herzog …a fire station?
Stefano Boeri Jacques, as an architect, what do you think about changes of use during the life span of buildings?
Jacques Herzog Critics tend to review and sometimes highlight buildings and at the same time they devaluate other buildings. It is important to understand buildings also through their ability to survive over time independent from contemporary moods and the current fashion. The Vitra campus is a good way of testing this. Zaha’s fire station was very hyped up at the time and now it stands there without any real function – but in fact it survives perfectly well as a piece of architecture in its pure sculptural quality. It has lost the surreal hype around it but I personally like it more now – when it seems a bit lost – than when it was freshly built.
Anniina Koivu What made you to decide that it was time to build your first showroom on the campus?
Rolf Fehlbaum In the past we have been very discreet, we never showed our own work, nor did we have a real showroom. Now there are two targets for visitors: the museum, which deals with design on a general base, and the VitraHaus, which reveals what we do. Of course we are still primarily in the office market. But when we started in 1957 with the Eames and Nelson collection, they were used in homes, not in offices. This has changed over the years. Then in 2000, we re-entered the home market. Around the same time we had the possibility to acquire a piece of land just in front of the public entrance. The economy was going well then, so we just decided to build. When things come together you have to catch the moment. These “moments” are rare and precious.
Anniina Koivu In fact, you have two new buildings which are nearly finished.
Rolf Fehlbaum Yes, the huge SANAA project, is almost ready, but nevertheless it is already in use. We really needed some place for storage, so the warehouse was absolutely necessary. Well, actually we are building again after a long pause. The last one – and I am not talking about the small pavilions – was in 1994.
Stefano Boeri This is an industrial park made up of extraordinary architectural pieces. To what extend would you like to open it up to the public?
Rolf Fehlbaum For me it has always been this way. My dream has always been that one day people would come to the campus and spend a day at Vitra, a Sunday a Vitra. They would visit a playground, a museum, a workshop and other buildings. This will happen in the future. But today, there is a fence because we still have to shield the factories for security reasons. I hope one day that you will stroll through the whole area, even if the factory stays. Public space is getting closer, bringing together workers, researchers and the visitor who is just looking for simple enjoyment. One day, all these groups will come together.
This talk first was published in Abitare 500, 03-2010
