Lounge Chair by Maarten Van Severen for Vitra, 2005

Belgian designer Maarten Van Severen was born in Antwerp in 1956 and is best known for his strong silhouetted seating collections produced by Vitra.

The son of a well-known painter, Maarten Van Severen studied architecture at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent. He graduated after three years, and worked on various interior design and furniture projects. In 1986, he created his first piece of furniture, which was a long, narrow metal table (first in steel, then remodeled in aluminum). The following year, Van Severen established his own studio, where he produced his own designs on a semi-industrial level. This unified process of design and production became Van Severen’s signature, and allowed him to be involved in the creation of each piece from start to finish, resulting in designs which were almost always limited editions.

Known for his pared down, pure-in-form tables and storage units, it was not long before Van Severen abandoned them to focus almost solely on seating design. Like many designers, Van Severen dedicated himself to creating the ultimate chair, with optimal form and production processes. In 1996, Van Severen collaborated with Vitra, designing for the company until his death in 2005. During this time, he worked with a wide variety of materials including aluminum, plywood, steel, and Bakelite. His most notable chair designs for Vitra include the .03 chair (1998), MVS Chaise Lounge (2000), .06 chair (2005), as well as the LL04 lounge chair (2004) for Pastoe.

Over the course of his career, Van Severen’s designs were produced by several European furniture manufacturers including the aforementioned Vitra and Pastoe, as well as Bulo, Durlet, Edra, Kartell, Obumex, and Target Lighting. Many of his designs are still in production today. In addition to work as a furniture designer, Van Severen worked on residential projects in France with fellow architect Rem Koolhaas (b. 1944) for the Dutch architectural firm OMU and held teaching positions at the University College West Flanders in Kortrijk (1996), the Academy of Fine Arts in Maastricht (1996-97), Delft University of Technology (1998), and universities in Helsinki and Barcelona (2000).

In 2005, Van Severen died from cancer at the age of 46 in Ghent, Belgium. In 2008, the Maarten Van Severen Foundation was established in his memory, and is dedicated to preserving and promoting the designer’s artistic legacy. In addition to the Foundation, Van Severen’s works are housed in the Ghent City Archive, the Flemish Architectural Archives, the Design Museum in Ghent, and the Department of Architecture & Urban Planning in the University of Ghent.

Swiss founders Willi and Erika Fehlbaum launched Vitra in 1934 as a shopfitting business in the Basel region, near the border of Germany and Switzerland. During a visit to America in 1953, the Fehlbaums became enamored with the innovative designs of Charles and Ray Eames—known today for the iconic Eames Lounge Chair & Ottoman (1956). In 1957, Vitra obtained licensing rights to produce Herman Miller furniture for the European market and began to manufacture the work of Charles and Ray Eames, as well as George Nelson—famous for the Pop Art-inspired Marshmallow Sofa (1956). 

In 1967, after working closely with Danish designer Verner Panton, Vitra introduced the Panton Chair (originally conceived in 1959/60). The design was deemed a modernist landmark because it was the first wholly plastic, stackable, cantilever chair made in one piece. Vitra soon became internationally recognized as a company that collaborates with talented, progressive designers to create cutting-edge, high-quality products.

Rolf Fehlbaum (b. 1941), eldest son to Willi and Erika, became Vitra’s Chief Executive in 1977. In 1981, after a disastrous fire at the Vitra facilities in Weil am Rhein, Germany, Rolf commissioned British architect Nicholas Grimshaw to design a new manufacturing hall. More architectural commissions followed, and the Vitra Campus (as the architectural ensemble came to be known) earned acclaim for the way its high-concept, contemporary buildings integrated into the surrounding natural landscape and residential areas. Architect Frank Gehry designed the first public building, the Vitra Design Museum (1989), to house Rolf’s ever-growing collection of chairs, the largest collection in the world.  Other buildings on campus were designed by the esteemed architects Tadao Ando (Conference Pavilion, 1993), Zaha Hadid (Fire Station, 1993), Alvaro Siza (Factory Building, 1994), and Herzog & de Meuron (VitraHaus, 2010).

After thirty years, Vitra’s partnership with Herman Miller was mutually terminated in 1984. Vitra, however, acquired the design rights to pieces by Charles and Ray Eames and George Nelson for Europe and the Middle East. For six decades, Vitra has been producing first-class furniture from iconic and internationally renowned designers and architects. Other famous designs in Vitra’s collection include Isamu Noguchi’s Noguchi Table (1939), Shiro Kuramata’s How High the Moon Chair (1986), Borek Sípek's Ota Otanek Chair (1988), Philippe Starck's Louis XX Stacking Chair (1992), and numerous patterns and textiles created by Alexander Girard. Vitra has also won countless design-related awards, such as the Lucky Strike Design Award in 1994, and their pieces can be found in design museums around the world, including the Tate Modern and Design Museum in London, Museum of Modern Art in New York, and, of course, Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein.

* Images courtesy of Vitra