Vitra Design Museum
Until May 9, 2027

Danish architect Verner Panton (1926–1998) is one of the 20th century’s most influential designers; he designed living landscapes and suspended chairs from the ceiling. His work—from furniture, fabrics, and lamps to sculptures, buildings, and interiors—radically redefined form, color, and space. To celebrate the centenary of his birth, the Vitra Design Museum will dedicate a major exhibition at the Vitra Schaudepot to Panton’s work. The chronologically structured exhibition shows how systematically Verner Panton pursued his design ideas. Already his early interiors of the 1950s were bold, colorful statements that broke out of Scandinavian design traditions. Panton’s collaboration with the company Plus-linje led to his first internationally known seating designs, including the cone-shaped Cone Chair. During the 1960s and 1970s, the designer broadened his scope, creating works that range from corporate and private interiors to entire furniture systems, textiles, and lighting. Projects such as the Panton Chair brought the designer international recognition, followed by major commissions including the Visiona exhibitions (1968 and 1970), the interior design for the Der Spiegel publishing house in Hamburg (1969), or the Varna restaurant in Aarhus, 1971. Each of these major projects allowed Panton to combine his different fields of work and merge them into multisensory environments with a distinctive, club-like atmosphere. Panton’s later works from the 1980s and 1990s illustrate how the designer continuously developed his formal language while remaining true to his core themes, such as color and a playful approach to design.

Showcasing the full breadth of his creative output—from iconic pieces like the “Panton Chair” to his lighting and textile designs—the exhibit will also feature several of his little-known architectural projects. A walk-in reconstruction of the legendary “Fantasy Landscape” (1/8) 1970, brings Panton’s revolutionary understanding of space and the spirit of the era vividly to life. The exhibits are embedded in a scenography that references Panton’s immersive spaces: a colorful ribbon runs through the entire Schaudepot, transporting visitors into a Panton-inspired world of chromatic color scales. The exhibition design transforms his sculptural, colour-rich worlds into an immersive experience.

The show is based on the extensive Verner Panton Collection at the Vitra Design Museum, which is one of the most important of its kind and comprises a unique wealth of objects, drawings, models, and archival materials.

The exhibition, which was created in close collaboration with Verner Panton Design AG, invites visitors to rediscover a visionary designer between pop, utopias, and organic worlds of color.

https://www.design-museum.de/de/ausstellungen/detailseiten/verner-panton-form-colour-space.html

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