Vitra Design Museum
Until May 4, 2025

With “Nike: Form Follows Motion,” the Vitra Design Museum will present the first-ever museum exhibition about Nike, the world’s most revered sports brand. The exhibition will explore the company’s five-decade ascent from a grassroots start-up to a global phenomenon. The focus is on Nike’s design history—from the company’s beginnings in the 1960s and the design of its famous “swoosh” logo, to iconic products such as Air Max and Flyknit, and current research devoted to future materials and sustainability. Following the Olympic and Paralympic Summer Games in Paris as well as the European Football Championship in Germany, the exhibition will emphasize the importance of sports for design innovation and social change, while also shedding light on the almost mythical devotion to sneakers and sportswear in popular culture and social media. The exhibition, which is structured in four chronological sections, has been initiated and produced by the Vitra Design Museum and curated by Glenn Adamson.

The first section, “Track,” delves into the Nike archive’s earliest holdings. The second exhibition chapter, “Air,” looks at the 1980s, when Nike achieved take-off. The third section, “Sensation,” explains some of the research and development behind Nike’s designs. Here, visitors get an insight into the heart of the Nike Sport Research Lab, one of the world’s largest and most advanced facilities for the study of the body in motion. The culmination of the exhibition, in Room 4, reflects on Nike’s collaborations with external designers, athletes, and its own public. The gallery is a showcase for 50 examples of intriguing and sometimes outrageous footwear from Nike’s history, some developed through collaborations with fashion designers and creatives, others within community-based projects.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a broad range of events and workshops on the subject of sports and design.

https://www.design-museum.de/en/exhibitions/preview.html

Advertisement