Andrés Reisinger connects Space Age furniture with virtual worlds

Furniture designed for imagined futures has long moved between fiction and everyday life. Science Fiction Design: From Space Age to Metaverse explores that exchange at the Vitra Schaudepot, bringing together more than 100 objects from the museum’s collection with material from film and literature.

Designing the future in the Space Age

The exhibition begins with early science fiction and its visions of technology, time and space. It then turns to the postwar Space Age, when designers including Eero Aarnio, Gae Aulenti, Luigi Colani, Joe Colombo and Verner Panton used organic forms and new plastics to imagine different ways of living. Some of these objects later appeared on screen, linking furniture design with films such as 2001: A Space Odyssey and Blade Runner 2049.

Works by Olivier Mourgue, Eero Aarnio and Pierre Paulin show how design could move between domestic interiors and cinematic futures. The exhibition also follows this dialogue into recent decades, including digitally fabricated objects and Joris Laarman’s 3D-printed Aluminum Gradient Chair.

Objects beyond physical space

Argentine artist and designer Andrés Reisinger shaped the exhibition’s display and contributed works created for both physical and virtual environments. His Shipping series and Hortensia Chair connect digital imagery with tangible furniture, while mirrors in the installation reference the writing of Jorge Luis Borges and suggest overlapping realities.

Moving from the Space Age to the metaverse, the exhibition asks how speculative design responds to present-day technologies and social challenges, and what kinds of futures its objects make imaginable.

Project Credits

Exhibition: Science Fiction Design: From Space Age to Metaverse
Exhibition design: Andrés Reisinger
Curators: Susanne Graner and Nina Steinmüller
Venue: Vitra Schaudepot, Weil am Rhein, Germany
Dates: 18 May 2024–10 May 2026