Top Designers and Glassmakers Present Glass Design Performances on the Vitra Campus During Art Basel 2010

CORNING, NY.- The Corning Museum of Glass will bring GlassLab to the Vitra Design Museum during Art Basel 2010, pairing international designers with Corning Museum glassmakers for a series of collaborative “design performances.” GlassLab design sessions will take place on the newly expanded Vitra Campus in Weil am Rhein, Germany, from June 14 to June 20, 2010. Participating designers will include Kiki van Eijk, Atelier Oi, Wendell Castle, Tomas Libertiny and Jeff Zimmerman, among others.

The designers will bring their sketchbooks and concepts and work side-by-side with glassmakers in a unique mobile hotshop developed by The Corning Museum of Glass. The teams will rapidly prototype their design ideas in live sessions, allowing audiences to observe this dynamic interplay and watch the evolution of the designs as they are created.

Exterior of The Corning Museum of Glass

GlassLab has been featured at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, and at Design Miami/Art Basel Miami. The hot glass design performance program was inspired by glass design workshops presented by the Corning Museum at Domaine de Boisbuchet, a design retreat center that is a cooperative effort of the Vitra Design Museum and the Centre Georges Pompidou, C.I.R.E.C.A. (Centre International de Recherche et d’Education Culturelle et Agricole) in the Charente region of Southwest France.

“GlassLab provides designers rare access to hot glassmaking processes and enables them to experience first hand the full potential of glass as a material for design,” said Rob Cassetti, creative director of The Corning Museum of Glass. “We value the partnership we’ve had in the Vitra Design Museum in presenting GlassLab and are excited to share for the first time this creative exchange with the public at Art Basel.”

GlassLab attendees will also be able to explore the Vitra Campus featuring the Vitra Design Museum and a collection of buildings by nine contemporary architects, including the new VitraHaus by Herzog & de Meuron. The Essence of Things. Design and the Art of Reduction—an exhibition investigating the motifs and motivations of reduction in design—will be on view at the Vitra Design Museum.