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Vitra Design Museum’s ‘Science Fiction Design’ explores furniture’s past, present and future visions ‘Science Fiction Design: From Space Age to Metaverse’ at Vitra Design Museum celebrates the collision between visionary science fiction and futuristic product design

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Installation view: ‘Science Fiction Design: From Space Age to Metaverse’ at Vitra Design Museum (Image credit: © Vitra Design Museum, photo: Mark Niedermann)

Vitra’s sprawling, architecturally diverse campus in Weil am Rhein, Germany, makes an appropriate setting for this new exhibition, ‘Science Fiction Design: From Space Age to Metaverse’. Tapping into our perennial preoccupation with the shape of the future, ‘Science Fiction Design’ explores the synergy between furniture design and the environments of tomorrow created by artists and production designers.

BY JONATHAN BELL PUBLISHED MAY 21, 2024

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Installation view: Science Fiction Design: From Space Age to Metaverse

(Image credit: © Vitra Design Museum, photo: Mark Niedermann)

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Curated by Susanne Graner and Nina Steinmüller, the exhibition features over 100 objects, many of which will be familiar from cameo appearances in everything from Star Trek to 2001: A Space Odyssey to Blade Runner, together with contemporary furniture pieces that are setting the agenda for future visions.

‘Science Fiction Design: From Space Age to Metaverse’ at Vitra Design Museum

Verner Panton, Fantasy Landscape at the exhibition ‘Visiona 2’, Cologne, Germany, 1970

(Image credit: © Verner Panton Design AG, Basel)

Argentine visual artist and designer Andrés Reisinger has created the suitably pared-back installation, presenting a host of chairs and other design objects as if they were pieces of high-tech equipment, in a minimal grey framework complete with frosted glass and mirrors that could have come straight from the set of a Kubrick film.

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Installation view: ‘Science Fiction Design: From Space Age to Metaverse’

(Image credit: © Vitra Design Museum, photo: Mark Niedermann)

Shown alongside the objects are excerpts from key pieces of science fiction film and literature, placing some of these in context and showing the dialogue and tension between designers creating for the modern age and the set dresser in search of something avant-garde and potentially out of this world.

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Eero Aarnio, ‘Pallo / Ball Chair’, 1963 (left), Olivier Mourgue, ‘Djinn Lounge Chair,’ 1964/65 (right)

(Image credit: Andreas Sütterlin / Jürgen Hans)

Jonathan De Pas, Paolo Lomazzi, Donato D'Urbino & Carla Scolari, ‘Blow’, 1967 (left), Joe Colombo, ‘Sella’, 1964/65 (right)

(Image credit: Andreas Sütterlin / Jürgen Hans)

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Patrick Jouin, ‘Solid C2’, 2004 (left), Konstantin Grcic, ‘Chair One’, 2008 (right)

(Image credit: Jürgen Hans / Andreas Sütterlin)

In addition to familiar screen icons like Olivier Mourgue’s ‘Djinn’ seating from 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Marc Newson’s ‘Orgone’ chair from Prometheus (2012), there are also explicitly space-age creations from the usual suspects, like Luigi Colani, Joe Colombo and Verner Panton, as well as the occasional leftfield choice (Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s ‘Argyle’ chair (1897) in Blade Runner (1982), for example).

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Erich Kettelhut, Drawing for Metropolis, 2nd Edition, 1925

(Image credit: © Deutsche Kinemathek – Museum für Film und Fernsehen, Erich Kettelhut Archive)

There are also pieces that pioneered new technologies like 3D-printed metal and even the dreaded NFTs, the latter exemplified by Reisinger’s own digital creations, which delve into the uncharted and thus overlooked realm of the Metaverse. 

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Scorpion Computer Cockpit, 2020

(Image credit: © Vitra Design Museum Photo: Andreas Sütterlin)

Science fiction was once treated as a temperature check on the technological issues facing society and contemporary culture, filtered through aesthetics and aspirations. The furniture on display at Vitra showcase how this relationship is increasingly two way.

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Francis Bitonti, Molecule Shoes, 2015

(Image credit: © Vitra Design Museum Photo: Andreas Sütterlin)

‘Science Fiction Design: From Space Age to Metaverse’, 18 May 2024 – 11 May 2025, Vitra Schaudepot, Weil am Rhein, Germany, Design-Museum.de

A selection of our favourites pieces from the show

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Günter Ferdinand Ris, Herbert Selldorf, ‘Sunball’, 1969-71

(Image credit: © Vitra Design Museum Photo: Jürgen Hans)

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Matti Suuronen, ‘Untitled’, 1969

(Image credit: © Vitra Design Museum Photo: Andreas Sütterlin)

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Maurice Calka, ‘P.-D.G. Desk’, 1969

(Image credit: Jürgen Hans)

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Luigi Colani, Vehicle Study, 1970/71

(Image credit: © Vitra Design Museum Archive)

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ZYVA Studio & Charlotte Taylor, Neo-Chemosphere, 2021

(Image credit: © Zyva Studio X Charlotte Taylor)

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AIBO ERS-110, Sony, 1999

(Image credit: © Sony © Vitra Design Museum Photo: Andreas Sütterlin)

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Still image from the film set of Things To Come, 1936

(Image credit: © Vitra Design Museum Archive)

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Georges Méliès, still image from the film Le Voyage dans la Lune, 1902

(Image credit: Public Domain)

Topics

Vitra Design Museum

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Jonathan Bell

Jonathan Bell has written for Wallpaper* magazine since 1999, covering everything from architecture and transport design to books, tech and graphic design. He is now the magazine’s Transport and Technology Editor. Jonathan has written and edited 15 books, including Concept Car Design, 21st Century House, and The New Modern House. He is also the host of Wallpaper’s first podcast.

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