At its new and vibrant Manhattan showroom, visitors are welcome to interact with Vitra’s joyful design
Back in 1953, Swiss businessman Willi Fehlbaum was on his first trip to New York, looking out of a yellow taxicab at the window displays, when a rare beauty with a set of slender, honey-brown legs and sensual curves caught his eye. He pulled over immediately. The object of his desire? A moulded plywood chair designed by Charles and Ray Eames. Back home, Fehlbaum and his wife Erika manufactured shop fittings, but this chance encounter sparked a transformational pivot. Their company, Vitra, acquired the rights to make furniture and objects by the Eameses and others, and soon became one of the world’s most renowned names in modernist design.
More than 70 years later, Vitra is back in New York, this time to open a permanent showroom and workspace on the third floor of a historic steel-and-glass 1960s building in bustling Chinatown. The 582sq m space, chosen after the Vitra team conducted nearly 100 site visits across the city, features the high ceilings characteristic of classic New York lofts. At 46 Bowery, it shares an address with soup dumpling hotspot Joe’s Shanghai, and is accessed via an elevator tucked into the vestibule.
“New York is an international design capital and we believe that the time is right to be here in a stronger, more intentional way,” says Fiete Schlüter, Vitra’s president of market management in North America. “With our new showroom, we’re able to offer a physical experience in North America of what Vitra stands for: the power of environments to shape how we live, work and interact.” Visits are by appointment and no direct sales are offered; instead, the space is intended to function as a place for creative gatherings and interaction. “It’s a platform for collaboration, inspiration and community,” says Schlüter.
The showroom’s large, open plan allows for flexible use. It opened in May 2025 during NYCxDesign, New York’s annual citywide design festival, and hosted talks on “topics ranging from human connection through furniture design to the role of hospitality in creative practice – and a compelling conversation about architecture and the energy transition”, says Schlüter. “These are the kinds of creative conversations that we want to keep building on.”
For those not able to make it to Weil am Rhein in Germany this summer to see the Vitra Design Museum’s exhibition – The Shakers: A World in the Making, about the astonishingly lasting influence that the 18th-century US religious group has had on artists and designers – the Vitra showroom will be hosting a series of associated activations. And in the autumn, the showroom’s programming aligns with New York Climate Week to investigate how the built environment can help advance climate goals.
“We’re also looking forward to celebrating the 90th anniversary of Artek,” says Schlüter of the Finnish brand, which was founded in 1935 by architect Alvar Aalto and acquired by Vitra in 2013. “It’s an opportunity to highlight not just the beauty and functionality of Aalto’s designs, but also Artek’s deep and ongoing connection to New York. The Aalto-designed Edgar J Kaufmann Conference Center at the United Nations Plaza is a powerful symbol of that link. In fact, we’ve preserved a portion of the original tiles from that building and installed them at our hospitality counter as a quiet tribute to Aalto and Artek’s legacy.”
The vertical tiles, in two shades of blue, are among the many energetic bursts of colour – and print – in the minimalist, industrial space, which has grey concrete floors, white exposed beam gridded ceilings and a silver curtain on tracks that divides the space in lieu of walls.
“The current palette is inspired by the bold impressions of New York: dark-red shades of old brick buildings, shimmering surfaces of the vast skyline and a joyful approach to colours,” Schlüter says. “Warm and natural hues are an important part of our portfolio and our sense of quality.”
Architect Serge Drouin, founding principal of AtelierTek (whose grand-père, famed French designer Jean Prouvé, was also on the Vitra roster), was brought in to collaborate with Vitra’s in-house team to revitalise the space, which he says was “previously used as a dim sum dining room, vacant for quite some time”.
“In an economy of means, the design of the new showroom is working with existing elements,” says Drouin, describing the overall feel of the space as “quiet but crisp, gentle and carefully articulated, letting the attention of the visitors focus on the furniture, and a spectacular view”.
“Besides the Aalto tiles, one of my favourite features is the way that we’ve embraced repetition, inspired by the rhythmic trusses of the ceiling,” says Schlüter. “We’ve installed the Uten.Silo by Dorothée Becker as a striking, large-scale wall relief. It beautifully echoes the space’s volume and structure.”
Other cheerful moments that play with the sense of scale include towering potted plants, a giant blue pencil leaning in the workspace corner, a denim pillow in the shape of a giant foot by local designer John Sohn, and sculptures of birds – an Eames house bird as well as a cast iron pigeon – perched on top of and under stools.
“Ultimately, we see 46 Bowery as a place for collaboration and community,” says Schlüter. “It’s where we’ll connect with our partners, clients and the broader public to share not just what we make, but what we believe in.” From its lofty vantage point above New York, the light-filled showroom is lined with a wall of windows facing the Beaux-Arts gateway to the Manhattan Bridge. “There’s constant movement: the flow of traffic, people and birds swirling upward,” says Schlüter. Looking out, you just might meet the gaze of a curious passenger in one of the cabs driving below.
Photography by Sean Davidson
This story was originally featured in OnOffice 172, Autumn 2025. Discover similar stories by subscribing to our weekly newsletter here
