UP & COMING
For a complete list of upcoming exhibitions and events, go to www.metropolismag.com.
SEP 25, 2008–JAN 11, 2009
COLD WAR MODERN:
DESIGN 1945–1970
The Victoria and Albert Museum’s major fall
exhibition will attempt something that, surprisingly, no museum has done before: survey
architecture, design, and pop culture from both
sides of the Iron Curtain during the Cold War
era. This is a tall order, and its broad scope
means dutifully paying homage to many of the
usual, exhaustively feted midcentury suspects—
Dieter Rams, the Eameses, Bucky Fuller, etc.
But the show also exposes the work of a host
of lesser-known figures and includes architecture, furniture, textiles, and graphics from the
Eastern Bloc, much of it never seen before by
Western audiences.
Given the very real threat of nuclear annihilation haunting the era, you might expect
Cold War design to reflect some of the pervasive anxieties found in other cultural artifacts
of the time, but most of the products seem
quaintly futuristic, charmingly naive, and kind
of a lot of fun. Messerschmitt’s three-wheeled,
bubble-domed Kabinenroller is a so-bad-it’s-good union of an airplane cockpit, a Volkswagen Beetle, and a Vespa scooter. (It’s no
wonder that Elvis bought one.) Peter Ghyczy’s
Garden Egg Chair, on the other hand, resembles an egg, yes, but also an oversize plastic-toilet-seat lid.
Perhaps more appropriate to the era is Oasis
No. 7, an enormous dome containing a beach
and a palm tree, designed by Vienna’s Haus-Rucker-Co. in the early 1970s. Impressively, the
exhibition will include a full-scale reconstruction of the piece. Considering the current global
ecological crisis, something tells us this inflatable oasis will seem more relevant than ever.
—Mason Currey
Victoria and Albert Museum, Cromwell Rd.,
London, ( 44) 207-942-2000, www.vam.ac.uk
Clockwise from above:
Messerschmitt’s Kabinenroller; the
interior of the Ješte˘d Tower, in the
Czech Republic; and Peter Ghyczy’s
Garden Egg Chair
Car, Die Neue Sammlung (A. Laurenzo); chair, V&A Images; interior photo,
Jiˇrí Jiroutek. All images courtesy Victoria and Albert Museum
