Having joined the Vitra Design Museum in 1995, Mateo Kries has worked as a curator and manager prior to serving as the director of the institution since 2011. During his tenure, Kries has curated numerous exhibitions, including retrospectives on figures such as Le Corbusier and Joe Colombo, exhibits on Arab Domestic Culture, and the influence of surrealism on design, among others. In 2001, Kries co-founded Berlin’s design festival, DESIGNMAI. He regularly writes on design and architecture for international media, having published ‘Total Design’, a critique of the overexposure of design in consumer societies and co-edited ‘Atlas of Furniture Design’, one of the most comprehensive studies on the subject. Kries is a member of the Scientific Committee of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris and serves on the Advisory Board of the IKEA Foundation.