Dezeen Magazine

SANAA and Alejandro Aravena at Vitra Campus

Japanese architects SANAA and Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena are constructing new buildings at the Vitra Campus at Weil am Rhein in Germany.

SANAA's project (top and above), which is already under construction, is an oval distribution centre while Aravena is contributing an art workshop.

Above and below: Aravena's building.

A third new project, VitraHaus by Herzog & de Meuron (below), is currently being built on the campus, which also features buildings by Zaha Hadid, Frank Gehry, Tadao Ando and others.

The three buildings will be exhibited in Venice at the Building Vitra: New Projects exhibition at the Spazio Culturale Svizzero in
Venice, Italy from September 12 to 30, during the Venice Architecture Biennale.

Above: model of SANAA's building.

Above and below: construction of SANAA's building.

Below: aeriel photo showing SANAA's building centre left.

Below: Vitra Campus on Google Earth.

Below: Vitra Conference Centre by Tadao Ando (left) and Vitra Museum by Frank Gehry (right).

Here's some info about the exhibition in Venice:

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New Projects by Herzog & de Meuron, SANAA and Alejandro Aravena

The “Building Vitra: New Projects” exhibition is organized by the Vitra Design Foundation in collaboration with the ISR-Centro Culturale Svizzero di Venezia.

The "new projects" are the works planned and underway on the Vitra Campus at Weil am Rhein which, with buildings by Nicholas Grimshaw, Frank Gehry, Tadao Ando, Zaha Hadid and Álvaro Siza, is an icon of late-20th century architecture. The architectural complex and its context were the focus of an intense photographic campaign by photographers Olivo Barbieri, Gabriele Basilico, Giovanni Chiaramonte and Paola De Pietri. Now, for the first time, the exhibition presents a selection of the original photographic prints, accompanied by a comprehensive graphic description of both the Weil am Rhein and Birsfelden sites.

As well as illustrating and interpreting the reality, models and material describing the three new projects underway – by Herzog & de Meuron (Switzerland), SANAA (Japan) and Alejandro Aravena (Chile) respectively – illustrate the changes being made to the Vitra Campus and allow visitors to analyze the design approach of these leading lights of the international architectural scene.

The exhibition also responds to and interacts with the work by the architect Vincenzo Casali presented at the Galleria Contemporaneo of the Comune di Venezia and in a larger outdoor installation in Campo Sant’Agnese. Without actually showing them, his work evokes the Vitra headquarters built by Frank Gehry in Birsfelden, Switzerland, in 1994.

Completing the cycle of initiatives planned for the Architecture Biennale 2008 is a lecture by the architects Jacques Herzog and Alejandro Aravena, organized by the Vitra Design Foundation in collaboration with the Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia and to be held in the Aula Magna of the academy headquarters in the former Ospedale degli Incurabili at 11am on 12 September.