FEBRUARY 2020
We visited the Vitra Design Museum during our stay in Basel, but actually this museum is located in Germany, just across the Swiss border in Weil am Rhein. I had heard about this museum as the building is designed by the famous architect Frank Gehry. I am always keen to visit Frank Gehry buildings and I have previously visited the Foundation Louis Vuitton in Paris, which is also designed by him. You may also know Frank Gehry from the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao or the Dancing House in Prague. I am not always lucky when visiting museums, but this time there was an interesting exhibition about visionary interiors of the past 100 years.
Vitra Design Museum
You can visit the Vitra Design Museum by public transport from Basel. We took a tram, which was free with our Basel card and walked for about twenty minutes to get to the entrance of the museum. If you don’t like walking, you can come by car and park your car near the entrance. The entrance fee for the Vitra Design Museum is € 11, if you also want to visit the Schaudepot, the combination ticket costs € 17. If you have a Basel card you receive a discount of 50% on the combination ticket. We loved the exhibition about visionary interiors and were a bit sad when we finished it. What I particularly loved about this museum is the way the objects were displayed, as they were displayed on mirrors. This gives you the opportunity to admire the furniture from a new point of view. The combination of the beautiful, clean architecture and a great, well displayed, exhibition put this museum on my list of favorite museums! Make sure you reserve sufficient time for visiting the museum and its surroundings, as the Vitra Campus offers several other interesting things to do (refer to below). The Vitra Design Museum also has an architecture tour, which you can book via the website. Unfortunately we had a train to catch, so we couldn’t participate, but the Vitra Campus definitely has enough interesting architecture for a good tour!
Vitra Campus
The Vitra Design Museum is located on the Vitra Campus, which describes itself as a fully operational production site and a field of experimentation for architecture and design. To be honest I had never heard of the company Vitra before, but when we visited the campus I discovered I did know some of its designs. Vitra is a luxury furniture company, with furniture well above my price point. You may know the Eames brothers, who designed a very famous chair for Vitra. The Vitra Campus does not only host the Vitra Design Museum, but also the Schaudepot, which is one of the largest furniture design holders in the world. We also liked to visit the VitraHaus, which hosts the Vitra store and cafe. The VitraHaus is not a regular store, but it is designed as a loft style house and we found it very inspirational. Too bad we spend all our money on traveling instead of expensive furniture 😉 One thing that is very affordable is the cafe, if you are visiting from Basel, make sure to have lunch here, as it is much cheaper than in Switzerland.
