Vitra Design Museum By Frank Gehry Editorial Photo

The Vitra Design Museum is an internationally renowned, privately owned museum for design in Weil am Rhein, Germany. The museum building, an architectural attraction in its own right, was Frank O. Gehry's first building in Europe, realized in 1990 in cooperation with the local architect Guenter Pfeifer. Although Gehry used his trademark sculptural deconstructivist style for the museum building, he did not opt for his usual mix of materials, but limited himself to white plaster and a titanium-zinc alloy. For the first time, he allowed curved forms to break up his more usual angular shapes. The sloping white forms appear to echo the Notre Dame du Haut chapel by Le Corbusier in Ronchamp, France, not far from Weil.