Sit, site, chair, cherry. is the result of an invitation from Rolf Fehlbaum to carry out a “photographic exploration of the Vitra Campus.” Beginning on 20 October 2022, I made four visits to the Campus.

I vividly remember how Rolf invited me to sit in several specific chairs to hear my thoughts on their comfort. It was one of the very first things I did upon arriving at the site. Sitting in a chair can, in itself, be an ordinary gesture – something we do countless times each day.

Yet doing so under the attentive gaze and sensibility of someone who understands its materials, design, form, history, intention, and concept transformed the act entirely. Today, I enjoy sitting in a chair.

I was told that the Campus was built on what was once a cherry tree orchard.

In 1993, architect Tadao Ando designed the Conference Pavilion within this orchard with such singular delicacy that only three trees were removed, allowing his building to be embraced by the ones that remained.

That gesture planted the seed of a new vision – one that shaped the Campus I came to photograph thirty years later: a place where nature and industry no longer stand in opposition, but share the same space in quiet harmony.

Vitra is a project with many different facets and layers: a Swiss furniture company, a campus with buildings by important contemporary architects, including Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Tadao Ando, and Álvaro Siza, a museum—the Vitra Design Museum—furniture collections, design and architecture estates and archives, gardens, publications, and people. The book combines all these motifs, supplemented by a number of historical photographs, to create an image of a place where you can sense the meaning and importance of design—as utopia and as everyday work.

Book:

Published by Spector Books
December 2025

584 pages
589 photographs
27,7 x 21,5 cm
Offset printing

Editing by Aleix Plademunt
Design by Hermanos Berenguer + Aleix Plademunt
Translation and copyediting by Benjamin Palmer
All photographs taken by Aleix Plademunt between February 2023 and June 2025, except some images from the Vitra Company Archive, Vitra Design Museum Archive, Rolf Fehlbaum Archive, and images from the Barragán Foundation Archive.

English Edition
ISBN 978-3-95905-891-9
Printed in Germany

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