Panton was already an experienced artist in Odense when he went to study architecture at the Royal Danish Academy of Art (Det Kongelige Danske Kunstakademi) in Copenhagen, graduating in 1951.
[2] In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Verner Panton experimented with designing entire environments: radical and psychedelic interiors that were an ensemble of his curved furniture, wall upholstering, textiles and lighting.
From this, began the start of the cooperation with the Danish firms of Plus-Linje (Cone Chair series furniture), Unika Væv (textiles) and Louis Poulsen (lighting).
For the Spiegel Publishing House, which moved into the modernized premises in 1969 in Hamburg's Ost-West Street, Panton designed the entrance area with courtyard and lobby, the canteen and the bar areas, the swimming pool for the employees in the basement of the building, the rooms for the editorial conferences and the lounges, as well as the colour schemes for the hallways of the administration or editorial highrise buildings.
Panton used the textile design Geometry I to IV for floors, walls and ceilings in order to give the room a uniform image.
The chairs grouped around the tables and the Topan lights work together to divide the large room into individual seating areas with an intimate note.
From the end of the Sixties to the mid-Seventies Bayer corporation hired a Rhine excursion steamer during every Cologne furniture fair and commissioned a well-known designer to transform it into a temporary showroom.
Bayer's Dralon synthetic fibre and its applications in the field of home textiles played a prominent part in the exhibition.
As early as the Visiona 0 exhibition Panton created experimental interior landscapes in which he was able to freely implement and demonstrate his design ideas, which were often interpreted as utopian.
The resulting room installation consisting of vibrant colours and organic forms is one of the principal highlights of Panton's work.
The creative fireworks which Panton lit with his studio within a preparation time of only a few months for 'Visiona 2' is expressed not only in the highly diversified room designs in the exhibition ship, but also in the wide range of furniture, lighting, wall coverings and textiles developed specially for this presentation.
The furnishing of the Spiegel Publishing house buildings in Hamburg count among the most outstanding examples of Panton's interior designs and are some of the few that still exist, at least in part.
For the famous news magazine which moved into the modernized premises in 1969 in Hamburg's Ost-West Street, Panton designed the entrance area with courtyard and lobby, the canteen and the bar areas, the swimming pool for the employees in the basement of the building, the rooms for the editorial conferences and the lounges, as well as the color schemes for the hallways of the administration or editorial high-rise buildings.
While the swimming pool area was destroyed soon afterwards by a fire and the entry and lobby saw major redesign in the 90s, the canteen has so far remained in the original version and today represents a unique and valuable historic document.
In the lobby the eye was caught by a mirrored ceiling from which apparently innumerable VP Globe lamps were suspended, and in the canteen the carpeting with its wave design gave the floor a three-dimensional appearance.
Here he created monochrome colour spaces in which simple geometrical fixtures and objects set up an atmosphere which was at the same time archaic and highly artificial.