Verner Panton: Form, Colour, Space

From 23 May 2026, the Vitra Design Museum will be dedicating a comprehensive exhibition to Verner Panton (1926–1998), entitled ‘Verner Panton. Form, Colour, Space’, at the Vitra Schaudepot in Weil am Rhein.

The exhibition runs until 9 May 2027 and showcases the full breadth of Panton’s work: from the Panton Chair, the Cone Chair and the Flowerpot lamp to visionary living environments and rarely seen architectural projects. At the heart of the exhibition is a walk-in reconstruction of the legendary Fantasy Landscape from 1970, which allows visitors to experience Panton’s understanding of space first-hand. All objects come from the Panton Archive at the Vitra Design Museum, which, in addition to furniture and prototypes, comprises more than 40,000 documents.

Panton studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen and gained his first professional experience in Arne Jacobsen’s studio. By the late 1950s, however, he was already developing his own radical spatial concepts, in which colour, textiles and light played a central role. In 1967, he achieved a technical masterpiece with the Panton Chair: the first chair without rear legs, made from a single piece of plastic. The exhibition traces this career chronologically and, for the first time, also highlights Panton’s little-known architectural projects as well as the design processes behind his work.

An Exhibition for Young and Old

The opening will take place on Friday, 22 May 2026 at 6 pm at the Vitra Schaudepot. An extensive programme accompanies the exhibition: on 28 May, Marc Lunghuß will read from his debut novel ‘Am Boden’, in which carpets, as a symbol of West German interior design, become a central element of the narrative. For children, the museum is offering interactive tours as well as a workshop in which participants can design their own living spaces as paper models.