Antony chair by Virgil Abloh c/o vitra

Antony chairs from 2035: US Edition Virgil Abloh c/o Vitra

We have 2 pieces of limited edition "Antony" chairs by Virgil Abloh c/o Vitra at our Vitra Landmark store. 

2035: US Edition Virgil Abloh c/o Vitra

In 2019, Vitra and Virgil Abloh presented the installation TWENTYTHIRTYFIVE, his vision of a future home, in the Fire Station on the Vitra Campus. Three products developed by the American architect, artist and designer were launched in a limited edition as spin-offs of the exhibition. Vitra and Virgil Abloh are now presenting an edition of limited pieces available to US consumers. 

The armchair Antony was developed by Jean Prouvé for the university halls of residence in Antony near Paris. With its dynamically curved wooden shell and characteristic metal base, this small armchair was one of the French designer’s last furniture creations. Virgil Abloh pays tribute to the iconic design with an updated version in his installation. He has transformed the armchair by giving it a frosted plexiglass shell, which is further accentuated by a baby blue lacquer finish. This version is available in a numbered edition limited to 150 pieces. 

Vitra Landmark is thrilled to secured two chairs, numbered V-VA-077 and V-VA-093 for our Hong Kong fans.

About Jean Prouvé

Jean Prouvé completed his training as a metal artisan before opening his own workshop in Nancy in 1924. In the following years he created numerous furniture designs, and in 1947 Prouvé established his own factory. During the ensuing decades, Prouvé served as a consulting engineer on a number of important architectural projects in Paris. 

He left his mark on architectural history again in 1971, when he played a major role in selecting the design of Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers for the Centre Pompidou as chairman of the competition jury. Prouvé’s work encompasses a wide range of objects, from a letter opener to door and window fittings, from lighting and furniture to façade elements and prefabricated houses, from modular building systems to large exhibition structures – essentially, almost anything that is suited to industrial production methods. In close cooperation with the Prouvé family, Vitra began in 2002 to issue re-edtitions of designs by this iconice French constructeur.  

To mark the start of the drop, Virgil Abloh and Nora Fehlbaum, CEO of Vitra, will discuss the collaboration and related aspects in a dialogue. 

‘I feel that it’s urgent, as designers, to make sure that design doesn’t leave out the 17-year-old boy who has no clue about art or design history,’ explains Virgil Abloh. ‘My hope for this collaboration is to further strengthen this bond with the new generation, providing them with further inspiration, as well as room for thought and a sense of inclusion. This collaboration invites the new generation into the conversation – my work is meant to open doors for them.’ 

‘What I find particularly inspiring about Virgil Abloh is that he comes to the table as an outsider, with a fresh look at our collection and a different pace, free of constraints,’ says Nora Fehlbaum, Vitra CEO. ‘I’m interested in the way that he structures knowledge and passes it on to a new generation in such a condensed manner. He manages to shift the topic of design classics away from the discourse of an intellectual elite to make them accessible to a wider public.’ 

The spin-off collection is related to an earlier collaboration that dropped during Art Basel in 2019 on the Vitra Campus in Weil am Rhein, Germany, involving the futuristic exhibition TWENTYTHIRTYFIVE. The three pieces – a Ceramic Block, along with the Petite Potence lamp and Antony armchair originally designed by Jean Prouvé – are now reimagined in baby blue. The ‘hacked’ Prouvé pieces demonstrate how the power of design can evolve in order to speak to a new generation. 

Virgil Abloh’s artistic intervention focuses on the interaction between an adolescent and his home surroundings. On one hand, it looks at how the evolution of technology and changes in society might affect our homes, touching on such themes as sustainability by means of recycling, dematerialisation and overabundance – or as Abloh suggests: ‘It’s arguable whether we will even have a need for furniture by 2035.’ 

On the other hand, it addresses the degree to which our environment influences our life path, our tastes and the decisions we make over time. ‘My studio has an ambition that the world can be a better place. Aesthetics will be impacted by the events of 2020, and in my mind, things will have to mean and represent something, and the meaning of the world is now getting recalibrated,’ says Abloh.