Science fiction has had an enormous affect on the humanities, together with literature, cinema, graphic arts and design. This impression is so vital that the Swiss furnishings firm glass devoted a year-long exhibition entitled Design Science Fiction: From the Area Age to the Metaverse to discover this intersection between design and science fiction.
To know the connection between these two realms is to revisit the historical past books. Briefly, design and science fiction have had an ongoing relationship because the 1950s, after the technological increase of the economic age. Science fiction started to return into its personal as a style when creators of the time started to think about a futuristic world made potential by new applied sciences.
First, the world watched the house race between the USA and the Soviet Union and witnessed the launch of the primary satellites, inspiring iconic designers corresponding to Gae Aulenti, Eero Aarnio, Luigi Colani, Joe Colombo and Verner Panton to develop a brand new expression of design primarily based on house journey know-how. These designs, distinguished by their natural shapes and glossy plastic surfaces, have been made well-known on the large display screen, corresponding to Olivier Mourgue's collection of Djinn chairs in Stanley Kubrick's movie. 2001: A Area Odyssey (1968) and Barry Sonnenfeld's Eero Aarnio's Tomato Chair Males in Black (1997). Comics, pulp magazines, and books additionally started to discover the sci-fi theme, creating a brand new fan base for the style. Years later, computer-aided design and 3D printing led to Joris Laarman's Aluminum Gradient Chair (2013), the primary 3D-printed steel chair. In recent times, the metaverse has opened the doorways to what looks as if infinite potentialities for rising designers to create and experiment.
All this, and a lot of what guests will see on the Vitra Schaudepot, appeared not possible till the designers made their concepts a actuality. Greater than 100 objects that doc the dialogue between design and science fiction are exhibited within the exhibition, staged by the Argentine visible artist Andres Reisinger. A designer himself, he included his Delivery collection (2021) and the Hortensia Chair (2018), the latter initially an NFT after which a bodily piece of furnishings. Because the exhibition's inventive director, Reisinger explains his imaginative and prescient: “As quickly as I used to be invited by the Vitra Design Museum to work on this exhibition, I knew I wished to include the themes of the Argentinian fantasy author Jorge Luis Borges, whom he i’ve a whole lot of time admired. A central motif in his work is mirrors, symbolic of portals to different realities. With this in thoughts, I made a decision to honor Borges by making mirrors the focal factors of the exhibition, utilizing them to mirror and evoke a number of realities and timelines that intertwine, creating a brand new dimension in our up to date world. I’m delighted with what we’ve got achieved with this exhibition, which speaks to a time and house that actually is aware of no time and house.”
Beneath is a small choice of objects discovered within the exhibition:
Nonetheless picture from the set of the movie Issues To Come, 1936 © Vitra Design Museum Archive
Erich Kettelhut, Drawing for Metropolis, Second Version, 1925 © Deutsche Kinemathek – Movie and Tv Museum, Erich Kettelhut Archive
Eero Aarnio, Pallo / Ball Chair, 1963 © Vitra Design Museum Photograph: Andreas Sütterlin
Matti Suuronen, Untitled, 1969 © Vitra Design Museum Photograph: Andreas Sütterlin
Joe Colombo, Sella, 1964/65 © Vitra Design Museum Photograph: Jürgen Hans
Günter Ferdinand Ris, Herbert Selldorf, Sunball, 1969-71 © Vitra Design Museum Photograph: Jürgen Hans
Louis Durot, Aspirale, approx. 1970 © Vitra Design Museum Photograph: Andreas Sütterlin
Verner Panton, Improbable panorama on the Visiona 2 exhibition, Cologne, Germany, 1970 © Verner Panton Design AG, Basel
AIBO ERS-110, Sony, 1999 © Sony © Vitra Design Museum Photograph: Andreas Sütterlin
Konstantin Grcic, Chair One, 2008 © Vitra Design Museum Photograph: Andreas Sütterlin
Joe Colombo, Residing Heart, 1970/71 © Ignazia Favata/Studio Joe Colombo Photograph: Rosenthal Einrichtung
Jólan van der Wiel, Gravity Stool, 2011 © Vitra Design Museum Photograph: Andreas Sütterlin
Scorpion Laptop Cockpit, 2020 © Vitra Design Museum Photograph: Andreas Sütterlin
Andrés Reisinger, The Delivery, Deep Area, 2021 © Reisinger Studio
Sophisticated Couch, The Delivery, 2021, art work by Andrés Reisinger © Reisinger Studio
Andrés Reisinger, The Delivery, Tangled, 2021 © Reisinger Studio
Andrés Reisinger, Hortensia, 2021 © Vitra Design Museum Photograph: Andreas Sütterlin
Francis Bitonti, Molecule Sneakers, 2015 © Vitra Design Museum Photograph: Andreas Sütterlin
Luigi Colani, Car Research, 1970/71 © Vitra Design Museum Archive
Maurice Calka, P.-DG Desk, 1969 © Vitra Design Museum Photograph: Jürgen Hans, © VG Bild-Kunst Bonn, 2024
Till Might 11, 2025, Design Science Fiction: From the Area Age to the Metaverse is a must-see for anybody fascinated by the interaction between design and futuristic imaginative and prescient. To study extra, go to vitra.com.
Exhibition pictures by Mark Niedermann.
