Book launch: Atlas of Furniture Design

With the Atlas of Furniture Design, the Vitra Design Museum has published the most comprehensive overview on the history of modern furniture design. With more than 1,000 pages, the Atlas is the most extensive book ever to be published on the topic. It documents 1,740 objects by over 540 designers, and features more than 2,800 illustrations, from object photographs to design sketches and interiors as well as patents, brochures, art, architecture, and portraits of the designers. The Vitra Design Museum collection, which counts among the world’s largest of its kind with upwards of 20,000 objects, including over 7,000 pieces of furniture, serves as the basis for Atlas of Furniture Design. The publication includes works by the most significant designers of the past 230 years and documents all important stages of design history. This includes 19th century furniture made out of bentwood and metal, Art Nouveau and Secession style designs, iconic designs by protagonists of modernism such as Le Corbusier, Gerrit Rietveld, Charlotte Perriand, Marcel Breuer, and Eileen Gray, but also post-war, post-modern, and contemporary furniture by designers such as Charles and Ray Eames, Eero Saarinen, Gae Aulenti, Finn Juhl, Ettore Sottsass, Philippe Starck, Hella Jongerius, Jasper Morrison, and Konstantin Grcic.

The Atlas of Furniture Design is the product of over 20 years of research at the Vitra Design Museum and was compiled by a team of more than 70 authors. It contains comprehensive essays on the socio-cultural and design-historical contexts of furniture design, over 550 detailed texts on pioneering objects, and numerous information graphics that provide new visual insights into the history of furniture design. Furthermore, the book contains a complete appendix that includes designer biographies, bibliographies, a glossary of producers and materials, as well as a keyword index. These features make this publication an encyclopedic reference guide and indispensable resource for collectors, scholars, and experts, and without a doubt a book to be treasured by design lovers all over the world.

The book presentation and panel discussion at Design Miami/ 2019 is hosted by the Vitra Design Museum and Vitra. To celebrate the North America premiere of the Atlas of Furniture Design, this panel talk will give insights into the research and protagonists of the most comprehensive book on furniture design ever published. Mateo Kries, editor of the Atlas of Furniture Design and director of the Vitra Design Museum, will speak with Humberto Campana, Eames Demetrios and Libby Sellers about the evolution of modern and contemporary furniture, the research that was needed to realize this encyclopedia, and the interest to share serious design knowledge with a wide audience. The panel discussion will be followed by a reception, and the book will be available for sale at Books & Books at Design Miami/.

We thank our partners and supporters:
Phillips, Knoll, Wüstenrot Foundation, Ikea Stiftung, Ernst Göhner Stiftung, Ernst von Siemens Kunststiftung, Vitra, Design Circle

Media contact: Lara Schuh, Head of Communications
Charles-Eames-Str. 2, 79576 Weil am Rhein, Germany
T +49.7621.702.3153, communications@design-museum.de