A Way of Life: Notes on Ballenberg turns the Swiss open-air museum into a sustained argument for vernacular architecture as a design school — one where door handles, brick tile floors, and worn benches speak more directly about utility than any manifesto.
About This Book
Founded in 1978, Ballenberg gathers more than 100 residential and agricultural buildings spanning the 14th to the 19th centuries, relocated from cantons across Switzerland and reassembled as a living record of how ordinary people built, furnished, and worked. This publication, edited by Rolf Fehlbaum — entrepreneur and long-time driving force behind Vitra — brings three practitioners with a shared sensibility to that material: designers Jasper Morrison and David Saik, and architect Tsuyoshi Tane. Their photographs, observations, and concise commentaries attend to the design ingenuities embedded in vernacular architecture: not grand gestures, but the enduring logic of objects shaped by necessity. The result is a quiet but pointed case for resisting trend-driven design in favour of functional beauty and lasting utility.
Key Features
- 208 pages of photographs and written observations documenting architectural details, furnishings, and craft objects at Ballenberg
- Edited by Rolf Fehlbaum; contributions from Jasper Morrison, David Saik, and Tsuyoshi Tane
- Covers buildings from more than 100 Swiss residential and agricultural structures spanning the 14th to 19th centuries
- Published by Lars Müller Publishers, 9783037787267
What You'll Discover
- How Swiss vernacular architecture encoded the needs of everyday life directly into the design of structures, furnishings, and tools — without aesthetic excess
- The intelligence of wear: close attention to traces of use on door handles, columns, benches, and floors as evidence of an enduring ethos of utility
- How traditional handicrafts — basket-weaving, forging, braiding, spinning, weaving, carving — functioned as part of an integrated material culture, kept alive in Ballenberg’s workshops
- A critical framework, articulated through design practice rather than theory, for evaluating everyday objects by the measure of utility and aesthetics rather than trend
About the Author
Rolf Fehlbaum is an entrepreneur and the long-time driving force behind Vitra, the Swiss furniture company. Jasper Morrison and David Saik are acclaimed designers; Tsuyoshi Tane is an architect. All three contributors share a documented fascination with the simple, the practical, and the functionally beautiful.
Specifications
- Format: Hardcover
- Pages: 208
- Dimensions: 150 x 200mm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9783037787267
- Publisher: Lars Müller Publishers
- Publication Date: [Details available upon request]
Perfect For: Architects, industrial designers, and design researchers drawn to vernacular architecture, material culture, and the functional traditions that precede — and often outlast — contemporary design movements.