Founded in 1950, Swiss company Vitra produces furniture and accessories that continue to define and shape the landscape of modern design.

The Vitra Design Museum numbers among the world’s leading museums of design. It is dedicated to the research and presentation of design, past and present, and examines design’s relationship to architecture, art and everyday culture. In the main museum building by Frank Gehry, the museum annually mounts two major temporary exhibitions. Smaller parallel shows are presented in the Vitra Design Museum Gallery, a neighbouring exhibition space. Often developed with renowned designers, many of the museum’s exhibitions cover highly relevant contemporary themes, such as future technologies, sustainability or questions like mobility and social awareness. Others address historical aspects or protagonists.

Director of Division Systems, Vitra

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With offices in Tokyo and Paris, British designer Jasper Morrison has worked for a staggering array of companies including Flos, Vitra, Samsung, Muji, Olivetti, Cappellini, Canon, Alessi, and others. An industrial designer trained at the Royal College of Art in London, Morrison's furniture design ranges from the contemporary classic Air Chair and the Eames-inspired Lotus Lounge Chair to bus stops, benches, and a tram for the city of Hannover, Germany. He's certainly one of the most respected industrial designers working today. He also represents the height of English industrial design, along with Tom Dixon.

Konstantin Grcic is a German industrial designer known for harnessing new technologies and materials to create stunning works of modern design. Born in 1965, he apprenticed as a cabinet maker at Parnham College in the UK before studying industrial design at the Royal College of Art in London. In 1991, he founded KGID, Konstantin Grcic Industrial Design. His work has includes the MAYDAY lamp for Flos, Miura barstool and Myto cantilever chair for Plank, and Chair One and 360 Containers for Magis in addition to creations for Lassicon, Krups, Moroso, Vitra, Luminaire, and Muji. He lives and works in Munich.

Hive was founded in 2002 with the idea that good design can and should be presented in an inspired, knowledgeable, and friendly manner. From humble beginnings fueled primarily on inspiration, Hive has grown to inhabit its own free-standing building in the Pearl District, Portland's most upscale urban neighborhood. They are an authorized retailer for Alessi, Artemide, Artifort, Carl Hansen, Cassina, Flos, Kartell, Knoll, and Vitra; just to name just a few.

Philippe Starck believes that creation must improve people’s lives. This notion pushes the designer in all of his pursuits, from designing everyday products like kitchen tools and lighting to grander projects like mega yachts and wind turbines. As an inventor, creator, architect, designer, and artistic director, Philippe Starck is a versatile artist who is focused on changing the world. Starck has completed thousands of projects, and has designed for renowned companies like Kartell, Flos, Magis, Baccarat, Vitra, Alessi, and many more. Starck was the first French man to be invited to speak at the TED conferences, and has been featured in various museum exhibitions including the Guggenheim and MoMa in New York. In the course of his celebrated design career, Starck has earned many awards and decorations.

Vitra, Fantoni, - office and home furniture

Designer Hella Jongerius (1963) has become known for the special way she fuses industry and craft, high and low tech, tradition and the contemporary. After graduating Eindhoven Design Academy in 1993 she started her own design company, Jongeriuslab, through which she produces her own projects and projects for clients such as Maharam (New York), Royal Tichelaar Makkum (The Netherlands), Vitra (Basel) and IKEA (Sweden). Her work has been shown at museums and galleries such as the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum (New York), MoMA (New York), the Design Museum (London), Galerie KREO (Paris) and Moss gallery (New York).

Ronan Bouroullec (born 1971) and Erwan Bouroullec (born 1976) have been working together for some ten years. Their collaboration is a permanent dialogue nourished by their differing personalities and shared perfectionism. In 1997 they presented their “Disintegrated Kitchen” at the Salon du Meuble in Paris and were spotted by Giulio Cappellini, who gave them their first industrial design projects, notably the Lit clos (Closed Bed) and Spring Chair. In 2000, Issey Miyake asked them to design a space for his new collection of A-Poc clothes in Paris. Then came the decisive meeting with Rolf Fehlbaum, chairman of Vitra, which resulted in their conception of a new kind of office system, Joyn, in 2002. This was the beginning of a special partnership which has borne fruit in numerous projects, including Algues, the Alcove Sofa, the Worknest and the Slow Chair. Since 2004, the Bouroullecs have also been working with Magis, for whom they have designed two complete furniture collections, Striped and Steelwood. Finally, they have worked on several types of textile wall systems, such as the North Tiles, in close collaboration with the Kvadrat brand, for whom they designed a new Stockholm showroom in 2006.

Zaha Hadid (1950- ) is amongst the most famous, celebrated, and reviled architects working today. Some criticize her work as insensitive to context and function--sculpture at the scale of architecture--while others praise the first female Pritzker Prize winner's deconstructivist style as perpetually on the vanguard of form and technology. For all her attention, she has produced few buildings. The first to actually be built was a fire station at the Vitra headquarters in Weil am Rhein, Germany, which was quickly abandoned as a functioning firehouse and repurposed into gallery space. Her other prominent commissions include the Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati; the Chanel Mobile Art Pavilion which has been in Tokyo, Hong Kong, New York and other places; the BMW Central Building in Leipzig, Germany; and Maggie's Center at the Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy, Scotland. She works from her studio in London.

Born in Los Angeles in 1904, Japanese-American designer and artist Isamu Noguchi made a name for himself as one of the preeminent sculptors and furniture designs of the mid-twentieth century. Noguchi spent much of his youth in Japan, where he was trained as a cabinetmaker, before returning to the United States and attending Columbia University. Though originally enrolled to study medicine, he shifted his focus to sculpting when he realized that it was his true passion. Noguchi applied his artistry to furniture, lighting, and product design, creating pieces--such as the IN-50 Coffee Table, Prismatic Table, and BB3 Lamp--for companies including Herman Miller, Knoll, Vitra, Ozeki, and Akari. His work also includes sculpture gardens around the world, notably at the Bienecke Rare Book Library at Yale University and at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris. Noguchi's home garden in Long Island City, New York, was opened to the public as the Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum in 1985, three years before his death.

In the 1950s, while Scandinavian designers were paving the path with organic designs made of natural materials, architect Verner Panton (1926-1998) was concocting futuristic creations out of plastic with a Pop aesthetic. Born in Denmark, Panton was introduced early on to Danish design legends Pøul Henningsen and Arne Jacobsen. Henningsen introduced Panton to product design—Panton knew he wanted to be an artist and Henningsen helped him find his focus—and Jacobsen introduced him to Danish manufacturer Fritz Hansen, for whom Panton designed the Bachelor Chair and Tivoli Chair. Panton's boundary-pushing designs (inflatable furniture, chairs made of molded plastic) were capitalized by Vitra, who manufactured his Flying Chair and, perhaps Panton's most famous work, his eponymous chair. Over 40 years since its creation, the Panton chair rivals the Eames lounge chair in popularity among today's modern design enthusiasts.

As one of modernism’s early great practitioners, and one of the finest designers France has produced, Jean Prouvé (1901-1984) bridged the gap between industrial production and aesthetic grace. Though he worked as an architect and designer, one can’t open a glossy design magazine without seeing his iconic cafeteria chairs. Unlike the production of the Bauhaus, which favored tubular steel, Prouvé worked largely with sheet metal, bending and working it to suit his needs. And his early training as a metal smith informed not just his own production as a furniture designer and architect, but caused him to establish a number of workshops over the course of his career. His buildings include the Maison du Peuple in Clichy, France, his own home in Nancy, and a series of gas stations, one of which now sits amidst the starchitect outpouring at the Vitra campus in southern Germany. Perpetually reworking his designs, experimenting with new materials, and generally pushing forward the use of metals like aluminum in the design process, Prouvé is done a certain injustice if remembered only as a designer. Though his work rightly stands at the apex of 20th-century modernism, his work as a lover of industry, of making and producing, deserves equal exploration.

Antonio Citterio was born in Meda in 1950. He graduated in architecture at the Politecnico of Milan. From 1972 he worked in the field of industrial design as a designer and consultant. He works with many manufacturers such as Ansorg, Arclinea, B&B Italia, Flexform, Flos, Kartell, Tre-P&Tre-Piu, Valli & Valli, Vitra. In 1999 he becomes art director for Brionvega. He won the Golden Compass Award in 1987 and 1995. In 1981 he also starts working on architecture and interiors, establishing a multi-disciplinary architecture and design studio with experience ranging from architecture to corporate design comprising total creative directing for a mixed range of international clients. Toan Nguyen: Born in Paris, 1969 Toan Nguyen graduated with honors in Industrial Design at ENSCI-Les Ateliers, Paris, in 1995. In 1998, after professional experiences in several design offices in Paris, Barcelona and Milan, he began his collaboration with Antonio Citterio. Since 2000, he managed the design department of Antonio Citterio, becoming design partner in 2004 and working with international companies such as: Alfa Romeo, Arclinea, Artemide, Axor-Hansgrohe, B&B Italia, Flos, Guzzini, Iittala, JCDecaux, Kartell, Technogym, Valli&Valli, Vitra, Wall. Toan Nguyen has been design assistant professor at the Domus Academy-Milan (2000) and the Mendrisio Architecture Academy-Switzerland (2000-2001) and jury member for the IF product design award 2009 in Hannover. In 2008, Toan Nguyen launched his own design office based in Milan, with a branch office in Paris, collaborating with leading international companies based in Italy, the United States, Germany and Spain.

su11 architecture+design was co-founded by Ferda Kolatan and Erich Schoenenberger in New York City in 1999. They have received the Swiss National Culture Award for Art and Design and the ICFF Editors Award for ‘Best New Designer’. In 2006 they were nominated for the prestigious Chernikhov Price and in 2008 they were chosen finalists for the MoMA/PS1 YAP competition. Their work has been published nationally and internationally including Archilab’s Futurehouse, Space, Monitor, L’Arca, Arch+, New New York, PreFAb Modern, Digital Real, The Metapolis Dictionary of Advanced Architecture, AD, Dwell, Le Monde, NY Times, LA Times and the Washington Post. Projects by su11 were exhibited in venues such as the Museum of Modern Art, Walker Art Center, Pasadena Art Center College of Design, Vitra Design Museum, Archilab Orleans, Documenta X, Art Basel and Carnegie Museum of Art.

Zinc Details is an independently owned furniture showroom, gallery and essential resource founded in 1991 by Vasilios "Vas" Kiniris and his wife, Wendy Nishimura Kiniris. They bring together brand names like Knoll, Herman Miller and Vitra with work by emerging talents and local Bay Area artists. Presenting playful groupings of furnishings, accessories and art, Zinc Details encourages visitors to make modern design a part of their lives and lifestyles.

Jules Seltzer is a full service dealership, retail, wholesale, and contract sales. Established in 1937, the company is the oldest operating Herman Miller dealership in the World. We are known for the Company we keep: Knoll, Fritz Hansen, Carl Hansen, Vitra, USM, Artek, Team 7, Geiger, Bernhardt, and Krug to name a few. Our client list reads like a "Who’s Who" of corporate America, medical centers, hospitality, education, as well as residences. We are members of both National IIDA and AIA.

Michele De Lucchi was born in 1951 in Ferrara and graduated in architecture in Florence. During the period of radical and experimental architecture he was a prominent figure in movements like Cavart, Alchymia and Memphis. De Lucchi has designed furniture for the most known Italian and European companies. For Olivetti he has been Director of Design from 1992 to 2002 and he developed experimental projects for Compaq Computers, Philips, Siemens and Vitra.He designed and restored buildings in Japan, Germany, Switzerland and in Italy for Enel, Olivetti, Piaggio, Poste Italiane, Telecom Italia. In 1999 he was appointed to renovate some of ENEL's (Italys principal Electricity Company) power plants. For Deutsche Bank, Deutsche Bundesbahn, Enel, Poste Italine, Telecom Italia, Hera, Intesa Sanpaolo and other Italian and foreign banks he has redesigned the service environments and corporate image, introducing technical and aesthetic innovation into organization of their working environments.He designed buildings for museums including the Triennale di Milano, Palazzo delle Esposizioni di Roma, Neues Museum Berlin and the le Gallerie d'Italia Piazza Scala in Milan. In the last years he developed many architectural projects for private and public client in Georgia, that include the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the bridge of Peace in Tbilisi, the Radison Hotel and Public Service Building in Batumi.His professional work has always gone side-by-side with a personal exploration of architecture, design, technology and crafts. In 1990 he founded Produzione Privata, a small-scale production and retail company through which Michele De Lucchi designed products that are made using dedicated artisans and craft techniques. From 2004 he has been using a chain saw to sculpt small wooden houses which create the essentiality of his architectural style. In 2003 the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris has acquired a considerable number of his works. Selections of his products are exhibited in the most important design Museums in Europe, United States and Japan.

Born in Tokyo, Kyoko Hamada grew up in Chiba, Japan until her father’s job relocated the family to Wheeling, West Virginia when she was fifteen-years-old. Hamada came to New York City studying art history at Manhattanville College, graduating from Pratt Institute studying photography and painting. Her subject matter has often been the ordinary people and objects stylized and staged into subtle quiet moments dealing with self-referentiality and various metaphors. She has participated in two artist residencies in Iceland in 2009 and 2010, and has exhibited her work in the National Portrait Gallery (uk), Randall Scott Gallery, Civilian Art Projects, and Michael Hoppen Gallery (uk), among others. Hamada’s photographs have been featured in PDN Photo Annual, Communication Arts, PDN Under 30, American Photography Annuals, NY Photo Festival Award. Her latest series, “I used to be you” recently received the grand prize from the Lens Culture International Exposure Awards, and was also included in the Critical Mass Top 50. She has been working as a commercial photographer for the last 10 years; her clients include Vitra, Uniqlo and Kärcher along with several magazines including The New Yorker, London Telegraph Magazine, Atlantic Magazine, and Wall Street Journal Magazine. She lives and works in New York City.

Brothers Ronan (born 1971) and Erwan Bouroullec (born 1976) were born outside Quimper, France, in Brittany and have emerged as the most successful and innovative French industrial designers since Philippe Starck. Though much of their work revolves around innovative uses of plastic, other designs like the Steelwood chair for Magis and Quilt sofa for Established and Sons explore a variety of materials. Of their work, the Vegetal Chair, Slow Chair, Alcove series, and Algue for Vitra; the Striped chair for Magis; and Facet series of chairs and sofas for Ligne Roset are amongst their most famous designs. Though just in their 30s, the pair have ascended to the heights of design stardom, making them that rare creature--a designer who simultaneously amongst the most popular and amongst the most talented.

Born in Paris, 1969 Toan Nguyen graduated with honors in Industrial Design at ENSCI-Les Ateliers, Paris, in 1995. In 1998, after professional experiences in several design offices in Paris, Barcelona and Milan, he began his collaboration with Antonio Citterio. Since 2000, he managed the design department of Antonio Citterio, becoming design partner in 2004 and working with international companies such as: Alfa Romeo, Arclinea, Artemide, Axor-Hansgrohe, B&B Italia, Flos, Guzzini, Iittala, JCDecaux, Kartell, Technogym, Valli&Valli, Vitra, Wall. Toan Nguyen has been design assistant professor at the Domus Academy-Milan (2000) and the Mendrisio Architecture Academy-Switzerland (2000-2001) and jury member for the IF product design award 2009 in Hannover. In 2008, Toan Nguyen launched his own design office based in Milan, with a branch office in Paris, collaborating with leading international companies based in Italy, the United States, Germany and Spain.

A native of Santa Monica, California, Sarah Rosenhaus has built her career designing residential and commercial spaces in Los Angeles and New York. For over 10 years, Sarah has been creating beautiful and expressive spaces that reflect the varied and cultured tastes of her clients. Sarah has built a portfolio of projects working with families, entertainment industry professionals and businesses with projects ranging from interior spaces to full remodels. While maintaining that the process is a collaborative experience, her keen ability to listen to her clients and to deliver above and beyond their expectations is what she has built her career on. From a young age, Sarah showed interest in many different creative avenues including piano, photography and decorating; where she formed a love and keen eye for fabric, texture, prints and color. Sarah got her start as a Junior Designer at Stephen Woolley and Associates, Architects. While there, Sarah worked on projects for Sony, Boeing and Electronic Arts as well as other private clients. Shortly after, Sarah joined Vitra Los Angeles as an in-house designer and product specialist. During this time, Sarah worked in tandem with several high profile architectural firms, including Neil Denari, on the Beverly Hills offices for Endeavor Talent Agency. In 2003 Sarah started SRID, focusing on residential clients and private events, while still working at Vitra. In 2005 Sarah ventured out on her own full-time and began working with companies like Backstage Creations designing VIP lounges at award shows such as the Billboard Music Awards, Sundance Film Festival and The Screen Actors Guild awards. From there, Sarah moved into working with industry professionals in the Hollywood Hills, Santa Monica and Malibu, where she gained much of her construction and project management expertise. Since then, her clientele have gravitated towards her firm as Sarah draws from multiple periods and styles while creating a collected and traveled aesthetic. In 2011 Sarah restored a 1964 Ray Kappe home which was featured on the 2013 Dwell on Design home tour and was considered one of the highlights of that year's tour. Kappe was pleased and excited with the quality of detail taken to restore the home. During the 3 hours that Sarah is not working, she enjoys taking her two sons, Matthew and Rhys, to the beach in front of her Santa Monica home.

After finishing school as one of six women in a class of 106 men, including Charles Pollock and Louis DeRespinis, whom she’d later marry, DeRespinis began working on small appliances at Emerson Radio for fellow Pratt alum Monte Levin. Later, she spent eight years designing “everything from rugs and tableware to trade shows, graphics, and interiors” at George Nelson Associates, including an Abbott Laboratories exhibition on nerve growth factor at the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair and the Glass Pavilion apartment in the landmark American National Exhibition in Moscow. As was customary in this era, credit for individual furniture pieces produced by the Nelson office was given solely to George Nelson—a practice that’s been reconsidered by license holders in recent years. Vitra now credits DeRespinis for the Eye and Spindle clocks, two recognizable designs originally produced by the Howard Miller Clock Company under Nelson’s and Irving Harper’s names. Later, DeRespinis expanded her port-folio by freelancing with the advertising agency Sandgren & Murtha, where, in 1975, she created the now iconic orange-and-pink Dunkin’ Donuts branding. She also served as a designer for companies producing ceramics and tableware, including flatware for the airline industry. DeRespinis’s ahead-of-its-time, verging-on-postmodern lighting for Nessen Lighting (1960), raised-relief tile for Pomona Tile Manufacturing Company (1961), and MLLE Award for Mademoiselle magazine (1973) further testify to her range. “I developed a way of analyzing and mapping the problem,” she says about ping-ponging between disciplines. “I take a familiar figure, then use abstraction to develop a way of looking at the figure other than how you’re used to.”

Richard Hutten (1967 Zwollerkerspel) graduated at the Academy Industrial Design Eindhoven in 1991. That same year he started his own designstudio, working on a variety of projects such as: furniture-, product-, interior- and exhibition design.He developed his 'No sign of design' and 'Table upon table' concepts. He is one of the most internationally successful Dutch designers; a key exponent of "Droog Design", in which he has been involved since it's inception in 1993. His work is part of the permanent collections of, among others, Centraal Museum Utrecht, Stedelijk Museum of Modern Art Amsterdam, Vitra Museum Weil am Rhein, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.Philippe Starck used some of Huttens designs for the interiors of the Delano Hotel Miami and the Mondrian Hotel Los Angeles. His clients include Hidden, Harvink, DMD, Planet, Sawaya & Moroni , REEEL, E&Y Tokyo, IDÉE Tokyo, Englender UK, S.M.A.K. Iceland, Pure-design Toronto, Centraal Museum Utrecht, MOSS New York, Donna Karan New York, Maxfield Los Angeles, Karl Lagerveld, KPN telecom and HRH Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands. His work has been exhibited inMilan, Köln, Paris, London, Berlin, Weimar, Toronto, Gent, Verona (Abitare il Tempo), Amsterdam (Stedelijk Museum), Rotterdam (Kunsthal and Museum Boymans van Beuningen), Utrecht (Centraal Museum), Den Bosch (Museum het Kruithuis), Breda (Museum De Beyerd), New York (Museum of Modern art), Kopenhagen (Louisiana Museum), Helsinki (Industry Museum & Alvar Aalto Museum), Bremen (Ubersee Museum), Montreal, Tokyo (Idée, E&Y), Osaka, Stuttgard (Design Centre) and San Francisco (Museum of Modern Art). His work has been published inall the leading international design magazines, among which: Items (NL), Design Report (D) Designo Interior (S), Blue Print (GB), Interni (I), Abitare (I), Design News (J), Wind (J), Axis (J), Vieuw on Colors (NL/F), Vieuw on interior (NL/F), Architectur und wohnen (D), Wallpaper (GB) Intramuros (F) and several issues of the international Design Yearbook (GB).

Circling the globe like we do, and given our network on the inside track, we've never been very satisfied by all those travel advisors and so called style experts who claim to know all about our favorite cities. While a few über brands are clearly better than most, we're tired of seeing the streets filled with store fronts that make each place we visit seem like dull clones of every other. We adore beauty, originality, invention and genius - qualities that are rarely found in any one brand or chain. We never seem to have enough time in the day, we're always looking for new experiences and better technology, and we've noticed that no one seems to be willing to offer a strong opinion. It's all become "instant" and "nice" but we need it better than that! Years ago, we started to gather our experiences in one place - not just what we wrote in our journals, but a living collection of things like those bits of paper, napkins and matchbooks from incredible restaurants and clubs, and dozens of room service menus from those not-so-well-known hotels. We've got receipts from cool stores and one-of-a-kind boutiques that carry only the best stuff and little gifts from hotels managers when we stayed an extra week in a luxury suite. As we began to share these gems with a few of our friends, we realized we could go one step further and create a presence online - so Charles & Marie was born. Given their desire for up and coming design and their keen interest to support designers from all over the world, Charles & Marie has evolved over the past months to be much more than the online presence that we envisioned it to be in late 2005. Today we are supporting designers from around the globe to manufacture their products, distribute them on international fairs and are developing marketplaces that allow designers to sell their products directly to consumers. What started with Charles & Marie at the end of 2005 is now an international operation that is headed by two industry experts: Marcus Greinke, ex global creative director for the leading global brand consultancy Enterprise IG is making sure the operations in the US run smoothly, whilst Claus Krogmann, ex Vitra country CEO is head over heels involved in growing the european market. Alongside them is a team of fabulous scouts and writers who actively push the idea Charles & Marie instilled in all of them as far out as possible! Without them, it would've never been possible!