Postwar Industrial Design
Products from the years when moldable plastics met the excitement of world fairs and the space race, including one school that tried to give the whole enterprise a theory.
Dictionary entry
- Space Age Design 1957–early 1970s / Style
Translates the hopes of the space race into capsule forms, spheres, molded plastic, vivid color and lightweight furniture.
- Italian Bel Design 1950s–1970s / Style
The golden age of industrial products made by postwar Italian industry and its designers, who added feeling and sculptural presence to functionalism. Castiglioni's lamps and Olivetti's machines exported the product as culture.
- Ulm School (HfG Ulm) 1953–1968 / Style
Founded by Max Bill as the Bauhaus's successor, the school redefined design as science, method and system. Its collaboration with Braun made the functionalist face a world standard.
- Brussels Style 1958–1960s / Style
The bright socialist-bloc modernism named for Czechoslovakia's triumph at Expo 58: asymmetric curves, thin splayed legs and atomic patterns spreading thaw-era optimism from housewares to animation.