Over the past century, science fiction has reflected the hopes, fears, and ambitions that accompany technological progress. Opening on May 18, 2024, the exhibition Science Fiction Design: From Space Age to Metaverse at the Vitra Schaudepot explores the ongoing relationship between this narrative genre and design, presenting more than one hundred objects from the museum’s collection in dialogue with film, literature, and digital environments.
Curated by Susanne Graner and Nina Steinmüller, the exhibition is designed by Argentine artist and designer Andrés Reisinger, known for his work at the intersection of the physical and digital. The display brings together furniture and objects ranging from the 1920s to pieces created for the metaverse, framed within a visual language inspired by the writings of Jorge Luis Borges, particularly his use of the mirror as a portal to alternate realities.
Since its origins in the nineteenth century, science fiction has addressed some of humanity’s most fundamental questions, imagining futures shaped by space travel, artificial intelligence, and environmental transformation. The literary visions of Mary Shelley and Jules Verne soon found visual counterparts in early cinema—one of the first being Le Voyage dans la Lune (1902) by Georges Méliès, a pioneering film that already envisioned a form of design for space exploration.
With the space race of the 1950s and 60s, what had once been imagined began to take material form. Aerospace technologies inspired architects and designers, who in turn influenced the visual language of science fiction in film. The so-called Space Age gave rise to objects defined by curving forms and glossy synthetic materials, such as Olivier Mourgue’s Djinn chairs—made iconic by Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey—or Eero Aarnio’s Tomato Chair, featured in Men in Black.
In the decades that followed, the dialogue between design and science fiction continued to evolve alongside digital technology, introducing tools like 3D printing and virtual modeling. A notable example is Joris Laarman’s Aluminum Gradient Chair (2013), the first chair 3D-printed in metal. While grounded in contemporary techniques, it evokes a futuristic aesthetic that extends the conversation into the present.
Today, as the world faces new global challenges—from climate change to artificial intelligence—the future remains a space of experimentation for design. For many young designers, the metaverse occupies the same imaginative territory that the cosmos held in the 1960s: a site for utopian thinking, where environments and objects can be conceived free from the constraints of the physical world.
It is within this context that the work of Andrés Reisinger takes shape. The exhibition features two of his most recognized projects: Shipping (2021) and the Hortensia Chair (2018), originally created as a virtual object in the form of an NFT and later produced as a physical piece. His work is defined by a smooth, dreamlike aesthetic that draws on both the legacy of cinematic science fiction and the visual language of contemporary digital culture.
Exhibition title: Science Fiction Design: From Space Age to Metaverse
Where: Vitra Schaudepot, Weil am Rhein, Germany
When: May 18, 2024 – May 10, 2026
Curators: Susanne Graner, Nina Steinmüller
Website: design-museum.de
