Vitra Design Museum

Listen first to the gravel under your shoes. Then look up. A cluster of white forms rises in front of you. Curves, ramps and tilted cubes press against each other, as if a small town has folded itself into one building. The walls are smooth white plaster. Above them, the roof is clad in pale grey metal that shifts colour as clouds pass. Nothing here sits quite square. You are standing at the Vitra Design Museum, on the edge of Weil am Rhein, in the far southwest corner of Germany.

This building was designed by the American architect Frank Gehry. It opened in 1989, and it was his first building in Europe. That date matters. Gehry's titanium museum in Bilbao came almost a decade later and made him a household name. Many people who know Bilbao never realise that the early version of those ideas stands here, beside a furniture factory near the Swiss border. The forms are smaller and quieter, but the language is already clear: walls that bend, volumes that collide, light that enters from unexpected angles.

To understand why a building like this exists in a small German town, you need to know about the company behind it. Vitra is a furniture maker. It was founded by the Fehlbaum family and grew to produce chairs and office furniture for clients around the world. Perhaps its best-known partnership is with the American designers Charles and Ray Eames. Vitra makes their famous chairs for the European market. So this site has always been a place where design is not only shown, but manufactured.

Here is a turning point that many visitors miss. In 1981, a fire destroyed a large part of the factory on this site. The company had to rebuild quickly. Rolf Fehlbaum, who led Vitra at the time, made an unusual choice. Instead of rebuilding with one uniform style, he began inviting different leading architects to design individual buildings. Over the following decades, the factory grounds turned into something closer to an open-air collection of contemporary architecture. This museum was one of the first pieces of that plan.

The museum itself grew out of a personal passion. Fehlbaum had gathered a large private collection of chairs and furniture. The building was created to show that collection and to host exhibitions about design. Today the institution organises shows on furniture, architecture, lighting, graphic design and the ideas behind everyday objects. Its exhibitions also travel to other museums around the world. The rooms inside change with each show, so what you see on any given day depends on the current programme.

Walk slowly around the outside before you go in. Notice how the building has no single front. From one side you see a curving staircase tower. From another, a skylight shaped like a cross bursts out of the roof. Gehry designed the exterior so that each angle tells you something different. A good exercise is to walk a full circle and count how many separate shapes you can name. Then go inside and see how those same shapes turn into rooms.

Inside, the light is soft and indirect. Gehry pulled daylight in through high windows and roof openings, so it falls across the white walls rather than straight onto the objects. The galleries flow into one another on different levels, linked by stairs and ramps. The space is surprisingly compact. It feels more intimate than the outside suggests. This scale suits furniture well. A chair is a human-sized object, and here you can stand close to one and study how it is made.

Now step back outside and look across the campus. The museum is only the beginning. Not far away stands a sharp, angular concrete building by Zaha Hadid. It was built as a fire station for the factory in the early 1990s, and it was the first major building she ever completed. Its walls lean and point like blades. Firefighting equipment has long since left, and the building is now used for events and display. For many architects, it is a pilgrimage site in its own right.

Nearby, the Japanese architect Tadao Ando designed a quiet conference pavilion from smooth bare concrete. It was his first building outside Japan. Ando is known for calm geometry and for the way he frames light and nature. The pavilion is set partly below ground level, so it does not dominate the landscape. The contrast with Hadid's restless fire station, just a short walk away, is striking. Two architects, two completely different ideas of what a building should feel like.

At the other end of the site, you will see a tall stack of dark gabled houses, piled on top of one another at odd angles. This is the VitraHaus, designed by the Swiss firm Herzog and de Meuron. The firm is based in nearby Basel, just across the border. The building takes the simplest image of a house, the one a child draws, and multiplies it. Inside, it serves as a showroom for Vitra furniture. The top floors offer wide views across the region.

Those views are worth a pause. Weil am Rhein sits at a meeting point of three countries. Germany, Switzerland and France come together close to here, along the River Rhine. On a clear day you can see toward the hills of the Black Forest, and toward the edge of Basel. Vineyards climb the slopes nearby. This border position helps explain the campus. Visitors arrive from all three countries, and the architecture itself feels international rather than local.

As you walk between buildings, keep an eye out for smaller surprises. There is a geodesic dome, a structure built from a web of triangles, based on ideas by the American engineer Buckminster Fuller. There is a twisting tower with a long metal slide, created by the artist Carsten Höller, where adults and children can ride down to the ground. These pieces are playful, and they remind you that design is not only serious. It can also be fun.

Before you leave, return to the white walls of Gehry's museum. Stand still for a moment. Listen to the voices on the gravel, the wind moving across the open lawns, perhaps the faint sound of the factory still working nearby. This is still an active industrial site, not a frozen monument. Furniture is made here, ideas are tested here, and buildings keep being added. As you walk away, look back once more and see which curve catches the light last.