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Vitra Campus - Weil am Rhein (Germany) - FIRE STATION
Zaha Hadid, 1993. In response to the major fire in 1981, Vitra resolved to build its own fire station. The commission for the structure was awarded to Zaha Hadid. Her first work ever to be realized, the building consists of a garage for fire engines, showers and locker rooms for the fire fighters and a conference room with kitchen facilities. The Fire Station is a sculpture of cast in-situ concrete that contrasts with the orthogonal order of the adjacent factory buildings like the frozen image of an explosion in a photograph. Today the building functions as an exhibition space.
From 1955 to 1981, the Vitra site in Weil am Rhein saw the successive addition of various manufacturing and warehouse structures that yielded a somewhat coincidental and improvised architectural composite. In 1981, most of these buildings were destroyed by a major fire.
Although insurance funds only covered a six-month interruption in production, the company did not wish to settle for anonymous standardized industrial structures or a solution with temporary facilities. The architecture was to be functional and offer a pleasant work environment while also fulfilling aesthetic requirements. Assigned to the architect Nicholas Grimshaw, this first project was followed by further buildings over the years, resulting in a heterogeneous ensemble of contemporary architecture: the Vitra Campus.
Vitra stands for an architectural concept that unites buildings by some of the most influential architects in the world at the Vitra Headquarters in Birsfelden (Switzerland) by Frank Gehri and on the Vitra Campus in Weil am Rhein (Germany). We have here buildings of Jean Prouvé, Buckminster Fuller, Frank Gehri, Tadao Ando, Alvaro Siza, Zaha Hadid, Sanaa and Herzog and De Meuron
_DSC8210
Vitra Campus - Weil am Rhein (Germany) - FIRE STATION
Zaha Hadid, 1993. In response to the major fire in 1981, Vitra resolved to build its own fire station. The commission for the structure was awarded to Zaha Hadid. Her first work ever to be realized, the building consists of a garage for fire engines, showers and locker rooms for the fire fighters and a conference room with kitchen facilities. The Fire Station is a sculpture of cast in-situ concrete that contrasts with the orthogonal order of the adjacent factory buildings like the frozen image of an explosion in a photograph. Today the building functions as an exhibition space.
From 1955 to 1981, the Vitra site in Weil am Rhein saw the successive addition of various manufacturing and warehouse structures that yielded a somewhat coincidental and improvised architectural composite. In 1981, most of these buildings were destroyed by a major fire.
Although insurance funds only covered a six-month interruption in production, the company did not wish to settle for anonymous standardized industrial structures or a solution with temporary facilities. The architecture was to be functional and offer a pleasant work environment while also fulfilling aesthetic requirements. Assigned to the architect Nicholas Grimshaw, this first project was followed by further buildings over the years, resulting in a heterogeneous ensemble of contemporary architecture: the Vitra Campus.
Vitra stands for an architectural concept that unites buildings by some of the most influential architects in the world at the Vitra Headquarters in Birsfelden (Switzerland) by Frank Gehri and on the Vitra Campus in Weil am Rhein (Germany). We have here buildings of Jean Prouvé, Buckminster Fuller, Frank Gehri, Tadao Ando, Alvaro Siza, Zaha Hadid, Sanaa and Herzog and De Meuron