090 SCI-FI DESIGN
collection, it explores how paradigms established by designers are pushed, extended and reimagined by science fi ction, which in turn exerts its infl uence on the world of design.
Curated by Susanne Graner and Nina Steinmüller, the exhibition takes visitors on a journey from the early 20th century to the space age of the 1950s and 1960s, to recent design objects intended for the virtual worlds of the metaverse. In literature, the science fi ction genre dates back to the 19th century, emerging in part as a response to rapid industrialisation and burgeoning new technologies. Pioneered by authors such as Mary Shelley and Jules Verne, it typically deals with advanced scientifi c and technological concepts such as space exploration and time travel as well as imagining what life might be like in the future. One of Edgar Allan Poe’s stories, T e Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall (1835), features a voyage to the moon, a concept that was explored by French fi lmmaker Georges Méliès in A Trip to the
2
modern vision for contemporary life. Space age design encompassed fashion, architecture, cars, furniture and objects for the home, bringing wonder and optimism for the future into everyday life. Organic forms, bold colours and shiny plastic surfaces were the order of the day, used in products that not only looked futuristic but refl ected a shift in the way that designers were thinking about what it meant to be modern. Take, for example, the furniture of Italian designer Joe
3
2 Eero Aarnio, Pallo/Ball Chair, 1963
© Vitra Design Museum Photo: Andreas Sütterlin
3 Erich Kettelhut, Drawing for Metropolis, 2nd Edition, 1925 © Deutsche Kinemathek – Museum für Film und Fernsehen, Erich Kettelhut Archive
4 Olivier Mourgue, Djinn Lounge Chair, 1964/65 © Vitra Design Museum Photo: Jürgen Hans
© VG Bild-Kunst Bonn, 2024
5 Günter Ferdinand Ris, Herbert Selldorf, Sunball, 1969-71
© Vitra Design Museum Photo: Jürgen Hans
6 Georges Méliès, still image from the film Le Voyage dans la Lune, 1902 © Public Domain
7 Joe Colombo, Sella, 1964/65
© Vitra Design Museum Photo: Jürgen Hans
8 Maurice Calka, P.-D.G. Desk, 1969
© Vitra Design Museum Photo: Jürgen Hans
© VG Bild-Kunst Bonn, 2024 4
Colombo, whose Sella 1001 lounge chair (1964/65) and modular Living Center (1970/71) furniture pieces perfectly embodied the future-forward spirit of the space age. Flying saucers were a staple of science
fi ction illustration in the 1950s and 1960s, and famously inspired Matti Suuronen’s quirky Futuro House of 1965, a prefabricated fi breglass-reinforced polyester plastic home designed to be easily transportable and which could potentially be sited anywhere in the
Moon (1902), one of the fi rst science fi ction fi lms, which is being screened at the Schaudepot. Other early science fi ction fi lms include Fritz Lang’s legendary Metropolis (1927) with its spectacular sets and dazzling visual eff ects designed by Erich Kettelhut, whose original drawing depicting the palatial skyscrapers of an imagined future in which a pampered aristocracy are served by an exploited underclass is also on display. Filmmakers increasingly embraced science fiction over the following decades, as did graphic artists and a whole slew of authors, including Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke and Philip K. Dick. In the 1960s, concepts anticipated by science fi ction were becoming reality: satellites were being launched into orbit, rockets were taking cosmonauts and astronauts into space and even to the moon as a result of the space race rivalry between the Cold War superpowers of the US and Soviet Union. Designers were also hugely infl uenced by the space age and its attendant innovations, which fed into a
5
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148 |
Page 149 |
Page 150 |
Page 151 |
Page 152 |
Page 153 |
Page 154 |
Page 155 |
Page 156 |
Page 157
