Vitra Design Museum’s ‘Science Fiction Design’ explores furniture’s past, present and future visions

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.

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

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.

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.

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).

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. 

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.

‘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