The pendant lamp “Moon” designed by Verner Panton (Denmark) for Louis Poulsen in 1960 lacquered metal image Indeed, Ball-shaped furniture, lamps, toys, and home appliances were ubiquitous in the 1960s and, though the phenomenon only lasted a few years, they indelibly marked the distinctive style of that period. Possibly inspired by the shape of Sputnik I or the popular depiction of planets and subatomic particles as smooth shiny balls, the designers of the time clearly had a strong preference, a real passion we may say, for globular forms, spheres and bubbles. On the whole, those accomplishments completely changed people’s habits and everyday life in just a few years and gave the impression that the potential of the human race was limitless.ĭesigners mirrored that confidence in the future in objects characterized by iconic shapes, a preference for synthetic materials, and a futuristic look in a nutshell, all the distinctive features of what we call today “Space Age Design”.
Such a hopeful attitude was fueled by an impressive sequence of scientific achievements – in space exploration, engineering, material science, physics, and medicine.
The period between the early 1960s and the early 1970s was marked by an optimistic vision of the future as a time in which technology would have brought us, citing Star Trek, “where no man has gone before”. Space Age Design: when designers went nuts for ballsįifteen iconic globe-shaped designs of the 1960s and 1970s
A model of the Sputnik 1 artificial satellite, 1957 image courtesy of the National Air and Space Museum, Washington D.C.
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