The Cold War era was about more than just military antagonism. Strong social and political tensions against a backdrop of post-war optimism set the scene for a period of intense creative and technological output globally.
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A new large-scale exhibition at the V&A in London will examine contemporary design, architecture, film and popular culture during the years 1945 to 1970 from across borders, including the USA, the Soviet Union, France, Germany, and the UK.
Over 300 exhibits neatly cross-section the period's unique milieu, that mid-century conflation of strident modernism, fervent commercialism, art, revolution and political anxiety.
Everything from Sputnik and an Apollo Mission space suit to Kubrick's satirical Dr Strangelove, paintings by Rauschenberg, Richter, and Picasso, 'futuristic' fashion by Pierre Cardin and Paco Rabanne, classic Eames furniture, Dieter Rams' designs for Braun, NASA space craft interiors by Raymond Loewy, and architectural blueprints for imagined utopias by Hans Hollein, Archigram and Superstudio are on show – remnants of an unlikely socio-cultural boom still being felt today.
ADDRESS
V&A South Kensington
Cromwell Road
London SW7 2RL
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Ramzi Mallat’s London Design Festival installation is a bittersweet ode to BeirutCreated as a memorial to the 2020 Beirut Port Blast, Mallat's ‘Not Your Martyr’ installation at the V&A (until 19 October 2025) is made of 260 colourful glass ma’amouls
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Bocci and Anna Carnick join forces on a showcase of evocative design practices in Berlin'Crafting Community' is on view at Berlin's Wilhelm Hallen until 14 September 2025
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The story behind a one-of-a-kind Dieter Rams handbag, reborn by German leather brand TsatsasA new exhibition at Vitsœ’s London store celebrates the ‘931’ bag, designed by Dieter Rams for his wife Ingeborg in 1963 and reborn over half a century later in a collaboration between Rams and German leather accessories brand Tsatsas
