The Vitra Campus in Weil am Rhein was enriched with two new elements: the Promenade by the Pritzker Alvaro Siza and the Slide Tower with clock by the artist Carsten Höller. The new works enter into a relationship with the other jewels designed by Tadao Ando, Frank O. Gehry, Herzog & de Meuron, SANAA, Jasper Morrison, Zaha Hadid, Nicholas Grimshaw, Claes Oldenburg & Coosje van Bruggen, Richard Buckminster Fuller, Jean Prouvé, Renzo Piano, Alvaro Siza already present in the Campus.
The Álvaro Siza Promenade is located on the public area of the Campus, the promenade and, it si 500 meters long and invites visitors to pause and enjoy a variety of episodic settings while also offering new visual perspectives of the Vitra Campus. The materials used to create these settings make reference to the materiality of the neighbouring buildings. The use of brick and granite is complemented by two-meter-high hornbeam hedges, whose foliage changes with the seasons.
The Vitra Slide Tower is a free-standing steel construction designed by the German object and installation artist Carsten Höller. The visitors to the Vitra Campus can climb the tower and are invited to descend it on a spiral slide with a length of 38 metres. In addition, a viewing platform on the tower, whose highest point measures 30.74 metres, offers new perspectives of the Vitra Campus and the surrounding landscape.
Carsten Höller is known for artworks that encourage visitor interaction, like his ‘Test Site’ installation, a gigantic slide created for the Tate Gallery in London (2006/2007). The slide attracted over one million active users during the six-month exhibition. Höller, who was born in 1961, is regarded as one of today’s most prominent artists.
