Virgil Abloh hacks Jean Prouvé and the teenage bedroom for Vitra

American designer, architect and artist Virgil Abloh presented his first collaboration with the historic design brand at the Zaha Hadid-designed Vitra Fire Station during Design Miami/Basel. Entitled TWENTYTHIRTYFIVE, the project took the form of an installation and product launch, introducing three new pieces designed by the Louis Vuitton Men’s creative director that reinterpreted the work of mid-century French designer Jean Prouvé. Split between two sections — ‘Past/Present’ and ‘Tomorrow’ — the exhibition delved into the imagined lifestyle of the contemporary teenager both in the present day in the year 2035 in what Abloh describes as a ‘residential biography’. The first installation recreated the teenager’s inner domain, his bedroom, complete with the varied accumulations of objects and memories that influence one’s future interests and life path. Arranged as a sort of colour-saturated dream sequence, the bedroom included iconic objects by the likes of Charles and Ray Eames and Eero Aarnio, alongside Prouvé.

The second environment skips forward 16 years into the future, where the erstwhile teenager has transformed into a ‘creative doer’. The objects collected in his youth now inform his present taste within a world in which Abloh questions whether we will need furniture at all. The three new products launched by Vitra were incorporated within the second section: Ceramic Block, a glazed and numbered ceramic block in neon orange; Petite Potence, a take on the cantilevered wall lamp Prouvé created for his home in Nancy; and Antony, a formerly wooden armchair Alboh has reimagined in plexiglass. ‘To me, design has the inherent idea of being a bridge from the past, with an eye towards the future,’ explains Abloh of the project. The exhibition will be available to visit until July 31 at the Fire Station on the Vitra Campus.

Opening picture: Virgil Abloh for Vitra, Ceramic block, TWENTYTHIRTYFIVE. Photo Julien Lanoo