Vitra Design Museum: Confrontations – Contemporary Dutch Design Live

Parallel to “Gerrit Rietveld – The Revolution of Space” the Vitra Design Museum Gallery is staging an exhibition exploring some of the central themes of the great Dutch modernist’s work: experimentation, recycling, working in unison with your materials.

Under the title “Confrontations – Contemporary Dutch Design Live”, five Dutch design studios will each collaborate with a company from the Basel metropolitan area to develop an object or installation using the respective firm’s principle material. Live. In-situ. In an afternoon.

The exhibition “cycle” begins on Tuesday June 12th and continues during Design Miami Basel.

Each object/installation will be created on a pallet atop a wire mesh crate. And also displayed on the same. As such the gallery will be empty on the Tuesday morning – save for the unused pallets – and full with the projects on Saturday evening.

All projects will then be on display in the Vitra Design Museum Gallery until September 2nd.

Older readers will already have understood that we are attracted to the exhibition by the possibilities that arise when young designers take a look at long established companies materials and structures. It needn’t be good. But it often is.

But also we find the opportunity to reflect on how the young designers respond to the challenges as compared to how Gerrit Rietveld may, theoretically, have responded to the same very appealing. In how far are Rietveld’s ideas and approaches still relevant and contemporary?

That and the fact that 2012architecten will be working with waste from the Vitra production facility. It’s obviously to be hoped that Vitra learn from the experience and either reduce their waste output or find more creative uses for that that they generate.

We’ll keep you posted.

Vitra Design Museum: Confrontations – Contemporary Dutch Design Live. Programme:

The respective design studios will be present and working in the Vitra Design Museum Gallery from 12 noon until 6pm. Entry is free.

Tuesday 12.06 Lucas Maassen with the pharmaceutical producer Roche

Wednesday 13.06 2012architecten with Vitra

Thursday 14.06 formafantasma with charburner Doris Wicki

Friday 15.06 Wieki Somers with chocolatier Rafael Mutter

Saturday 16.06 Dirk Vander Kooij with automotive parts producer A. Raymond.

And for the sake of completeness a sixth studio, catalogtree, are responsible for the, rolling, exhibition design.

Vitra Design Museum: Confrontations - Contemporary Dutch Design Live