Swiss family-owned furniture manufacturer, Vitra, knows a thing or two about knock-offs. Their world-class furniture has inspired countless counterfeit designs that claim to provide the same premium quality. In their new global campaign, “The Original Comes from Vitra,” the brand makes it clear that authenticity is key when it comes to continuing its legacy of superior industrial design.
Despite the best efforts of some, there’s truly no copying a classic piece of furniture. That’s why Vitra is making it their mission to bring awareness to customers about the importance of crediting designers properly and why piracy in product design is harmful to both the consumer and creator. As a manufacturer who, for over 80 years, has collaborated with renowned designers and their descendants to create custom new pieces for the industry, Vitra can guarantee high-quality, sustainable and excellent design — three characteristics that copy-cat brands can’t offer.
Landi Chair by Hans Coray
By unveiling previously-unseen details behind the creation of their original products, Vitra hopes to convince customers that design authenticity is more important than any money spent on similar replica products. This new series of stories, which is rolling out through a new Leporello booklet, an exclusive Eames quote book, a 3D dealer roadshow and other events, showcase specific aspects of Vitra originals that distinguish them from imitations.
These stories also speak to Vitra’s commitment to carrying out the legacy of these original designs through preservation and continual production, as well as detailing the ways in which new designers are finding genius in old design ideas.
Through an intensive manufacturing process, Vitra provides sustainable, long-lasting pieces that actually enhance in appearance and increase in value as they age. They can therefore offer current customers access to vintage original products like Hans Coray’s Landi Chair, which was developed for the 1939 Swiss National Exhibition.
The Landi Chair is considered by many to be one of history’s most important pieces of twentieth-century design. It established a new typology of a three-dimensional moulded seat shell situated on a separate base. Created completely out of aluminum, the lightweight, stackable chair featuring a porous design has largely been used in outdoor applications since its inception and graced the patios of people across the world for decades. In a new video, Vitra reveals the chair’s complex manufacturing process and includes an interview with Rolf Fehlbaum about the evolving importance and enduring popularity of the classic chair.
The Standard Chair, by architect, engineer and self-trained industrial designer Jean Prouvé, was transformative for the furniture industry back when it was introduced. Now, it’s engineering is the backbone of modern chair design.
Jean Prouvé’s Standard Chair is just as well-loved, making it an obvious choice for Vitra to issue re-editions of the late French industrial designer’s work. Among all of Vitra’s product designs, the Standard Chair was perhaps one of the most innovative and forward-thinking items he created. A self-taught architect and designer, Prouvé knew that chairs take the most stress on their back legs, so he incorporated steel tubing suffices for the front legs and back legs made of voluminous hollow sections that transfer the weight to the floor. This small but game-changing concept has led to hundreds of iterative chairs designed with the same careful construction.
The Panton Chair by Verner Panton is one of Vitra’s most iconic designs. Thanks to innovations in modern plastics technology, the sculptural product is expertly-made today and sold as an affordable piece of classic industrial design.
Another of Vitra’s most iconic chairs has a similar story to the Landi Chair and others that were recently brought back to life. The Panton Chair was created by Danish designers Verner Panton in the 1960s. Initially thought of as an unconventional, impossibly-unstable chair, it became a personally challenging project for Fehlbaum and his team to engineer correctly. They spent years researching, testing and optimizing the sculptural design.
When a small pilot series was released in 1967, it became the first all-plastic chair on the market to be made in one piece with a cantilever design. Due to the costly manufacturing process and trouble in developing a strong enough thermoplastic material, the product was discontinued for 11 years and then resumed production in 1990 after innovations in new plastics arose. Today, the chair is available as an affordable industrial product, fifty years after market launch.
The Organic Chair, originally designed in 1940, did not go into serial production until 2006, when manufacturing technologies had advanced sufficiently.
Vitra’s Organic Chair, a Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen original design that is still sold today, was another project that couldn’t be completed until modern technology caught up. Designed and submitted to the Museum of Modern Art’s 1940 competition, “Organic Design in Home Furnishings,” the small reading chair was never fully realized due to its complex organic form. Once production processes enhanced, Vitra began selling the product in 2006.
The Tip Ton Chair, designed by Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby in 2011, was created to close the gap in the market for school chairs designed to keep up with 21st-century learning methods.
Vitra is not only intent on maintaining the prominence of historic originals, they encourage today’s top designers to innovate their own unique creations based on past successes. In 2008, the Royal Society for the Encouragement of the Arts, Manufacturers and Commerce commissioned British designers Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby to develop a furniture concept for the new Royal Society of Arts Academy in Tipton.
Inspired by the Robin Day’s Polyprop Chair introduced in 1963, the pair consulted with Vitra’s research team to develop the Tip Ton Chair, an ergonomic, indestructible, lightweight chair that allows children to tilt forwards and backwards. This innovative design helps prevent physical ailments and promotes circulation, allowing them to concentrate better in the classroom.
These anecdotes, though about seemingly simple chairs, tell the larger story of Vitra’s devotion to their products and the people they work with. By highlighting the gravity of integrity in design authorship and educating their customers on true original design, Vitra is proving that originality equals cultural resilience, and any piece of fake design — whether it’s a chair or some other furniture product — can’t live up to the legacy of an original.
Vitra’s story tells us that investing in original design is worth it, that imitation will always disappoint in the end. Any owner of a classic Vitra product understands, just by virtue of interacting with the design, that they’re adding to the longevity of that product and helping usher it into the future.