It’s Vitra’s driving motivation, together with prominent designers, to create innovative products and concepts. These are adapted by architects, corporate companies and private users to create inspiring work places, living situations and public spaces. Besides their timeless classics and new products that contribute to contemporary culture, Project Vitra facilitates an exciting cultural program at the Vitra Campus amidst its ensemble of outstanding architecture. 

A rough concrete structure for contemporary forms of work with a focus on variety, interaction and recreation: The “Hammerschmidt” in Dornach near Munich offers not only customizable and freely arrangeable rental spaces but also community-oriented exterior areas like a cascading stairwell and a vast rooftop terrace. The iconic architecture is both the medium and message: Hammerschmidt is a holistically thought-through workplace in which new work cultures and an updated conception of work-life balance find their spatial analogue.

Berlin’s art scene remains in motion and in continuous development with 45 participating galleries presenting highly diverse program at this year’s Gallery Weekend. Here one gets a taste of Berlin’s districts while discovering a global plethora of contemporary works by established artists as well as promising newcomers. With a special boost of activity in Charlottenburg area, the galleries once more open their doors as places for interaction and exchange between artists, curators, collectors and enthusiasts alike.

Lhon tofu, fjord- and rainbow trout in a Thai-dressing, wild boar pad ped and sweet green beef curry – head chef Dalad Kambhu is bringing traditional Thai cuisine to Berlin-Schöneberg. The menu consists of several dishesto share. With a strong foundation of traditional Thai recipes, Kambhu has created a unique symphony of seasonal and regional products and original Thai flavours. Since their launch in 2017, Kin Dee has become an integral part of the Berlin food scene and in 2019 was awarded their first Michelin star.

Transgressing the boundaries of a classical museum retrospective, Miriam Cahn embodies her presence through a personal staging of a non-linear chronology. The exhibition is assembled following Cahn’s own principles of thought. Her work is heavily influenced by the feminist movement of the 1960s, yet her paintings are radically subtler – disturbing, oneiric displays of crude features and grotesquely exaggerated sexual organs. 

From larger then life sculptures to subtle textual interventions in unusual urban contexts, “Marmor für Alle” sets the encounter with some of the most important and public art across the city. After 1945, a boom began in the East and West Berlin, punctuating numerous places of assembly with some of the most iconic and cult fixtures. Zooming in on different districts, each section of the book reveals and vivifies elements of the city’s biography through works of public art – evidencing the historical events and political ideas that shaped them.

The completion of Frizz23 in Kreuzberg is a milestone in Berlin’s real estate enterprise. This residential and commercial project is the fruit of a tireless collaboration between local actors, district authorities, the Berlin Senate, FORUM Berufsbildung and Deadline Architects. More than a private facility for investor-owners, Frizz23 is an accessible bottom-up structure aiming to counteract the impending gentrification in this area and project a different image about development strategies in Berlin.

Grill Royal has long been a fixture on the Berlin fine-dining scene. In 2016, its intimate French offshoot opened under the direction of Jeanne Tremsal, in leafy Charlottenburg on the ground floor of a Wilhelminian period-building. The menu offers Grill Royal classics mixed with French elegance – fresh fish, oysters, and modern interpretations of principals in the French cuisine, such as coq au vin, all of which is complemented by a fine selection of wines.

Featuring some 100 works and numerous original plaster figures by Alberto Giacometti and Francis Bacon, some of which were never on display before, the Bacon Giacometti exhibition at Fondation Beyeler sheds light on the complex relationship between the two artists. Featuring four main thematic sections, a particular focus investigates the distinct isolation of space, subjects enclosed in cage-like entities.

Certain works of art are historically important but no longer offer us experiential quality. Louise Bourgeois, whose life spanned the 20th century used art as a way to understand herself, inventing distinct visual worlds of emotion and raw self-expression, such as the arresting structures of her famous Cells. Schinkel Pavillon invites us to revisit the last two decades of her life through a focused selection of works presented in diverse media forms. 

In conjunction with the Milan Design Week 2018, Vitra presents Typecasting, a panorama of 200 objects, curated by Robert Stadler. The Austrian designer looks at furniture outside conventional categories, such as their functional uses or historical origins. Instead, he regards them as characters, arranged in groups that reflect discernable behavioural patterns and personality types in contemporary society. 

Pin-up girls, comic book heroes and supermarket products collide. A diverse mix of structures brushed in colour to make the history of Pop Art. Eduardo Paolozzi’s pictorial worlds, man and machine in action are inspired by the artist’s fascinations with science and technology. This exhibition makes a close-up on his experimental work between the 1940s and the 1970s and his productive year in Berlin in 1975. 

Night Fever is the first exhibition to offer a comprehensive overview on designing nightclubs. From Radical Design clubs of the 1960s to the legendary Studio 54 in New York and more recent concepts by the OMA architecture studio for the Ministry of Sound in London, this exhibition features films, original photographs, posters, flyers and garments, to take visitors on a fascinating tour into the glamorous, avant-garde energies of nightlife.

Years after a joint partnership between Verner Panton and Vitra, the Panton Chair was launched into production in 1967, to be the first all-plastic cantilever chair to be manufactured in one piece. Created with a revolutionary technique even by today’s standards, its unique design symbolized an era. Now, 50 years later, Vitra celebrates this timeless icon by releasing two limited editions that bring lustre and luminosity to its original curves: a Panton Chrome and a Panton Glow. 

Tucked away between two older buildings, vGGG is a stylish housing cooperative project consisting of three residential units. The building’s location is crucial to its aesthetic preferences: Ohmstrasse, a quiet haven of sorts, dates back to the “founding era” of Berlin, which makes the realisation of modernist architecture a bit of a challenge. To resolve this, Gonzalez Haase’s creative design approach conceived the building from the inside out, allowing it to genuinely interact with its environment.