Space Age Style: The Pieces, the Book, the Album, the Film

Between 1960 and 1972, from Sputnik to the final Apollo mission, furniture left wood behind for moulded plastic, fibreglass and foam. From Finland to Italy, seats came to resemble capsules. The style holds in a single image: the flat as a spacecraft.

The pieces

Eero Aarnio's Ball Chair (Asko, 1963), a fibreglass sphere on a swivel base: around €7,000 new at Eero Aarnio Originals, between €5,000 and €10,000 for a period Asko. Olivier Mourgue's Djinn lounge chair (Airborne, 1965), the one from “2001”: rare, between €2,000 and €6,000 vintage. The Panton Chair (1967), a single-piece plastic form to which we devoted a Scan: around €350 new at Vitra. The Nesso lamp (Artemide, 1967), a mushroom of orange or white ABS, between €400 and €500.

The book

“Sixties Design” by Philippe Garner (Taschen), by a former Sotheby's expert: the panorama of the decade, object by object, with the edition dates.

The album

“Moon Safari” by Air (1998). A revival, but the one that put the Moogs and the strings of 1969 back into living rooms: slow, round, lacquered. For a period version, Serge Gainsbourg's “Histoire de Melody Nelson” (1971), strings and bass beneath a spoken voice.

The film

Stanley Kubrick's “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968), to which La Séance devotes its first article on 2 October: the lounge of the orbital station is furnished with red Djinn. Lighter, Roger Vadim's “Barbarella” (1968), fur, Perspex and a spacecraft lined with carpet.

The palette and the materials

Lacquered white, orange, red, glossy fibreglass, moulded plastic, thick carpet, chrome. The light is coloured, in globes and mushrooms, never a classic pendant. To achieve it without turning your home into a set: a single plastic piece, white or orange, within an otherwise restrained scheme.

The address

Matti Suuronen's Futuro House (1968), a prefabricated fibreglass saucer, a few examples of which are on show in museums, notably in Espoo, Finland. Closer to home, the Palais Bulles at Théoule-sur-Mer, to which we devoted an Open House.

Spotted a moulded plastic seat in this spirit? Scan it on Beyit: the original, the maker, the year, the value — and what exists at an affordable price.