A single building is definitely not enough for Vitra. One site alone cannot possibly suffice to house even a fraction of all the opportunities and combinations incorporated in the essentially open Vitra products system. In this respect even the idea of elongating and stacking on top of each other not one but several “normal” houses reduced, as it were, into a “house” pictogram, is as puzzling as it is convincing. There simply have to be several buildings for a built equivalent of the Vitra philosophy and the company’s Home Collection to emerge. Herzog & Meuron understood precisely that, and designed a highly diverse building. via