Maarten Van Severen .05 Chair

Founded in 1950, Vitra is a Swiss company dedicated to improving the quality of homes, offices and public spaces through the power of design.

Vitra's furniture and concepts are developed in an intensive design process pairing engineering excellence with the creative genius of leading international designers. The result: interiors, furniture and accessories that are vibrant, functional, and inspiring.

Longevity of materials, construction and aesthetics are Vitra's leading principles, as demonstrated by their Classics – many in continuous production since the 1950s. Initiatives like the Vitra Campus architecture, the Vitra Design Museum, workshops, publications, collections and archives are all integral elements of Vitra's vision and culture.

Maarten Van Severen, born 1956 in Antwerp, Belgium, studied architecture at the Sint-Lucas Art Academy in Ghent, Belgium. He designed his first furniture pieces in 1986 and in the following year established an independent workshop, where he pursued the limited, semi-industrial production of his own furniture designs.

This unified process of design and production was a fundamental aspect of his work over a long period of time, in which he devoted himself to the examination of basic furniture types: chair, table, chaiselongue, shelving, cabinet. He developed primary solutions for these categories based on a comprehensive exploration of the questions of form, material and construction.

Beginning in 1990, Maarten Van Severen began to collaborate closely with Rem Koolhaas and also turned his attention to interior design tasks. During this period he also assumed teaching positions at a variety of institutions, including 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.

The beginning of his collaboration with Vitra in 1996 marked a new phase in his career. It offered him the opportunity to work with new materials and also brought a much wider degree of exposure and influence. Until his death in 2005 in Ghent, Maarten Van Severen developed a range of new designs for Vitra, which have progressively entered series production.