Words Nina Steinmüller, Collections Curator at the Vitra Design MuseumDate 25 February 2025

Our current exhibition at the Vitra Design Museum, “Science Fiction Design: From Space Age to Metaverse,” explores the profound link between design and science fiction.

What started as literary genre in the mid 19th century thanks to Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” has resonated in many designs, inspiring a scientific foundation in the world of creative innovation. A well-known aspect of sci-fi, popularized by films and fueled by the space race, is Space Age design. From the late 1950s to the 1970s—a period marked by groundbreaking innovation, new technology, and forward-looking optimism—architects and designers were inspired to experiment with modern materials like glass fiber reinforced plastic, enabling them to craft furniture without traditional supports. Initially leading to stable, moldable plastic furniture, today these pioneering designs can also be realized through single-step injection molding.

Below are six key examples of sci-fi design that explore the futuristic potential of design, tracing an evolutionary journey from the innovative breakthroughs of the 19th century to the visionary concepts of today.

Argyle, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, 1897

Architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh, a notable figure in Scotland’s Arts and Crafts movement, first gained recognition with his “Argyle” chair, designed for the Argyle Street Tea Rooms. The chair’s high back, which soon became his signature, featured a strict, geometric aesthetic that also informed his approach to interior design. Mackintosh’s approach to interiors, creating enclosed spaces around a table and evoking the architectural concept of “rooms within a room,” was truly groundbreaking.

Interestingly, Ridley Scott chose this chair for Deckard’s apartment in the 1982 film “Blade Runner,” set in 2019—a testament to its timeless design. This use in a futuristic setting underscores a common sci-fi theme: the blending of different times within a single narrative, often reflecting the genre’s fascination with time travel and historical integration.

Djinn, Olivier Mourgue, 1964/65

The "Djinn" chair exemplifies the 1960s space-age design with its organic shapes and stretchy fabric, concealing its construction—a stark contrast to the structured aesthetic of the Argyle chair. Designed by Olivier Mourgue between 1964 and 1965, the Djinn gained iconic status when Stanley Kubrick featured it in the 1968 film “2001: A Space Odyssey,” specifically in the Hilton lobby scene in the lunar space station. Legend has it that Kubrick discovered the chair through a magazine feature on Mourgue’s home, prompting him to contact the French designer for permission to use it in his groundbreaking film.

Fantasy Landscape / Visiona II, Verner Panton, 1970

The Verner Panton “Visiona II” transcended traditional furniture design, creating an entire room experience. While Panton never explicitly stated his inspiration from science fiction or space, his work redefined living spaces, encouraging a rethink of how we interact within a room. Instead of conventional chairs, he designed organic forms for people to recline on, complemented by stretchy fabrics that transformed the room’s aesthetics.

“Fantasy Landscape” was an exhibition featured at the Cologne Furniture Fair, uniquely staged on a boat. Panton crafted a colorful, playful environment that reimagined the living room as a cohesive artistic concept, or gesamtkunstwerk, incorporating carpets, furniture, walls, and lighting into a utopian vision of future living. This installation showcased his radical approach to designing environments, suggesting new possibilities for domestic life.

Sunball, Günter Ferdinand Ris and Herbert Selldorf, 1969-71

Little is widely known about the designers behind the “Sunball” chair, but Günter Ferdinand Ris was an artist and Herbert Selldorf an architect. They collaborated to create this piece for Rosenthal, primarily a ceramics company that briefly ventured into furniture in the 1970s with a line of playful, innovative designs. The “Sunball,” produced only for a short period, exemplified multifunctional outdoor furniture. Its design, echoing the fascination with space travel during that time, resembles an autonomous living capsule complete with integrated lights or a radio, marrying formal and functional elements with built-in technological features.

Harkonnen, H. R. Giger, 1980/81

The Giger chair was envisioned by H.R. Giger for Argentine director Alejandro Jodorowsky’s unrealized science fiction film adaptation of Frank Herbert’s “Dune.” Giger, known for his dark fantasy designs and his Oscar-winning special effects for “Alien,” created the anthropomorphic and biomechanical "Harkonnen" chair, featuring a spine-like backrest, tubes, and cables, with one version including three skulls at the top. Although the film was never produced, Giger continued to manufacture these distinctive chairs, which remain available for purchase.

Sketch, Front, 2005

The “Sketch” chair exemplifies the fusion of materials and production with modern design technologies. Intriguingly, 3D printing brings to life the science fiction concept of creating objects seemingly from nowhere, reminiscent of machines in “Star Trek” that materialized food instantly. While 3D printing has been around since the early 2000s and used for prototyping back in the 1980s and 1990s, its integration into design was transformative.

The “Sketch” series was developed by Front, a Swedish all-women collective. They pioneered a novel approach by using motion capture to draw furniture designs in the air. The movements, traced by light, were captured by cameras, converted into digital designs, and then materialized through 3D printing. This innovative method merges digital precision with the spontaneity of handcrafting, echoing the imaginative leaps seen in science fiction.

Hortensia, Andrés Reisinger, 2021

We collaborated with Argentinian visual artist and designer Andrés Reisinger, celebrated for his digital-only furniture like the “Hortensia” chair from “The Shipping” series. Reisinger, emerging from a digitally native generation, radically challenges traditional design by dismissing gravity, materials, and conventional processes, which opens new realms of creative freedom. Initially available as NFTs, due to high demand, he later produced physical versions, starting with the Hortensia chair. His donation of one to the Vitra Design Museum led to our collaboration and his role in designing the exhibition.

Reisinger’s work explores the future of design, creating ethereal yet realistic pieces that inhabit vast, lunar-like landscapes. His designs, such as the Hortensia chair and 10 other pieces, appear lifelike yet move in ways that defy traditional materials and production techniques, blurring the lines between the real and the imagined. For the Hortensia chair’s physical incarnation, he partnered with textile designer Júlia Esqué to replicate the delicate movement of the chair’s floral elements, maintaining its distinctive, soft aesthetic.