Slideshow: Vitra Design Museum and Campus – Basel, Switzerland

A variety of buildings quietly sit on the Vitra campus outside Basel, each designed by one of the world’s top architects. Ando sits next to Gehry across the street from a new Herzog and de Meuron. Grimshaw, Siza and Gehry added factory buildings, with a fourth under construction designed by Sanaa. The firehouse was Hadid’s first completed building and a Buckminster Fuller geodesic dome completes the campus. An impressive collection of architecture compliments the exquisitely designed furniture Vitra is famous for, including designs by Charles and Ray Eames. My visit there was all the more interesting with an exhibit of the work of the Campala Brothers, fantastic designers and artists.

Upcoming Posts

You may have noticed that Talkitect.com has been pretty quiet over the past few weeks (not including the spike of video posts recently). This is because I was gallivanting around southern Germany and Switzerland visiting amazing works of architecture, exploring stunning landscapes and checking out some fantastic cities. Part of the goal of my travels was to gather more places and topics to write about. Over the next couple of weeks I will be posting four or five new articles, some new videos and even an Interview or two with some inspiring people running architecture themed galleries here in Berlin. There are also a couple of interesting architecture and art events coming up that I plan on covering as well as a short trip to London that might offer some more topics of conversation. All this goes hand in hand with a job search, as I look for a design position at an architecture firm in Berlin.

Upcoming Articles:
- Peter Zumthor’s Thermal Baths in Vals, Switzerland
- Peter Zumthor’s Kunsthaus in Bregenz Austria
- Peter Zumthor’s Kolumba art museum in Cologne, Germany
- The Vitra Design Museum and Campus (including buildings by Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Nicholas Grimshaw, Álvaro Siza, and Herzog & de Meuron as well as an exhibit on the Campana Brothers)
- The Glenn Murcutt International Masters Class
- Herzog & de Meuron and the architecture of Basel

Check out the most recent slide shows Here:
Architecture Photography

An older post worth reading:
The Sustainability of an Architectural Practice

Don’t forget to check the list of articles and slide shows in the left hand column or the blog’s archive for past posts you may have missed. Also, get involved in the conversation by leaving comments on articles or videos you find interesting (or mundane for that matter – critical comments are welcome too) and by clicking the “follow” or “subscribe” buttons at the top of the left hand column. You can also follow me on twitter by going here: lugray on twitter.Your contributions are greatly appreciated and what makes running a blog like this worthwhile. Thanks for reading and check back soon for new content.

Admiration for Gehry

A review of the DZ Bank Building, Pariser Platz, Berlin
By Lucas Gray


Always a controversial figure in architecture circles Frank Gehry has a body of work that is bold, creative, and somewhat bizarre. Love or hate his designs you have to admire the fact that he gets people to talk about architecture and for this we all should thank him. He brings discussions of architecture into the average person’s life with his wacky titanium clad curves. His structures are also destinations for travelers and tourists. Many people make it a point to visit his buildings when they are in a particular city or region. Although I can’t say I am a fan of his work I still am interested to experience his buildings first hand when presented with the opportunity.

The most recent Gehry design I visited was actually a remarkable surprise. The DZ Bank in Berlin, behind the Brandenburg Gate and overlooking Pariser Platz, is an incredibly muted building on the exterior. Its façade consists of large windows punched through a sheet of limestone. The top floor is set back to provide a terrace that overlooks the plaza. Simple squares evenly paced across the face of the building. Strict parameters were forced on the design due to its Historical surroundings.

This simple façade belies the typical Gehry forms, which explode within the interior atrium. Enter the building and from the dark lobby you are presented with view that makes you forget the almost boring façade. A morphing glass vault allows ample daylight to wash over the floating titanium clad conference room and sparkle off a blobular glass roof to a subterranean events hall. Bridges flow in and round these objects while the warm wood covered walls relate back to the simple grid of the exterior. With the simplistic background the crazy curves and blobs actually come alive and make the space special. It is easily understood what functions are located where and how the choreography of the space works – something often missing in other Gehry buildings I have visited. As I stood behind the security line and snapped some photographs I started to enjoy the playfulness of the design and admired the risk of bringing this to such a typically conservative organization, a bank.

For this visit I purposely made my way across Berlin to get a view of the atrium space. However, my first experience with the building was more of an accident. I was visiting the Holocaust memorial on a sunny fall day not knowing that the Gehry building was close by. See, the building truly has 2 fronts, the bank faces the Pariser Platz while the second programmatic requirement – high-end apartments – faces south with stunning views over the Eisenman designed memorial. This southern façade also gives a hint of Gehry’s tendency for drama. Here the wall of the same creamy limestone steps back as it rises while gently bending and folding to create a curtain like movement to the stone wall. Again, large windows are punched out and recessed to provide each apartment with a balcony overlooking the field of concrete pillars. It is relatively sober compared to the usual Gehry gaudiness but in its restraint I believe it compliments its surrounding environment and becomes an admiral addition to the heart of Berlin.