Eröffnungsvortrag "Plastic: Remaking Our World", 25. März 2022 (youtube.com) mit Ineke Hans in der Hauptrolle.

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Plastic: Remaking Our World

26.03.2022 - 04.09.2022

Vitra Design Museum

Exhibition Program
Further information

Plastic shapes our everyday life like no other material: from packaging to sneakers, household appliances to furniture, and cars to architecture. For decades, plastics stood for carefree consumption and revolutionary innovations, fueling the imagination of designers and architects. But those days are over, now that the consequences of the plastic boom have become drastically visible. With the major exhibition "Plastic: Remaking Our World," the Vitra Design Museum examines the history, present, and future of a controversial material: from the rapid rise of plastics in the 20th century and their devastating environmental impact to solutions for a more sustainable approach to plastic. The exhibition features rarities from early modernism, objects from the pop era, and numerous current designs and projects, including pragmatic innovations, initiatives to clean up the oceans, recycling concepts, and bioplastics based on algae or fungal cells.

At the start of the exhibition, a large-scale film installation illustrates the conflicts arising from the production and use of plastic. Timeless scenes of pristine nature are contrasted with films about plastic production over the last 100 years, highlighting the allure of increasingly fast-paced and cheaper industrial manufacturing. It took over 200 million years for the fossil raw materials coal and oil—the basis for all synthetic plastics—to form, yet in barely more than a century, they have become one of the greatest global environmental problems of our time.

The exhibition continues by focusing on the development of plastics and their perception—from their beginnings in the mid-19th century to the global ubiquity of plastic today. The first precursors were based on plant and animal raw materials: for centuries, horn and tortoiseshell were used to craft drinking vessels or cutlery. The first fully synthetic plastic was invented in 1907 by Leo Baekeland; named Bakelite, it was soon considered a material of unlimited possibilities.

While the first plastics were often developed by tinkerers and individual inventors, the rapidly growing petrochemical industry—with companies like Dow, Du Pont, Imperial Chemical Industries, and IG Farben—took a leading role starting in the 1920s: the era of "petromodernity" had begun. The profession of industrial design, emerging in the 1930s, quickly developed the new possibilities of the material. World War II also accelerated the development of plastics: plexiglass for aircraft cockpits and nylon for parachutes were processed on a large scale for the first time. After 1945, these materials entered households in the form of plastic tableware, Tupperware, toys like Lego bricks, the Barbie doll, and easy-to-clean PVC flooring.

With the growing fascination for space travel, the utopian potential of plastic moved to the forefront a few years later, reflected in futuristic shapes and new living concepts. Eero Aarnio designed the "Ball Chair" (1963) as a private space capsule, Gino Sarfatti’s "Moon Lamp" (1969) references the moon landing, and the "Toot-a-Loop" (1971), a plastic bracelet with a built-in radio, was the first portable electronic device. The 1973 oil crisis briefly made oil, the basis for most plastics, scarce and expensive, but the plastic boom was only slowed down temporarily. While global plastic production soon picked up speed again, efforts to avoid plastic waste were slow to take hold.

Today, plastic is ubiquitous worldwide and has become an indispensable part of everyday life. This is especially true in the healthcare sector, where the positive, sometimes life-saving properties of plastic are just as evident as its negative, even life-threatening effects. The consequences of the plastic boom have been burned into our collective consciousness: from microplastics in the soil, the oceans, and our bodies, to mountains of packaging waste, most of which is still disposed of or incinerated today—with immense ecological consequences on a global scale.

How can we overcome the global plastic waste crisis? What role can design play in this, alongside industry, politics, and consumers? The exhibition addresses these fundamental questions. Projects such as "The Ocean Cleanup," "Everwave," and "The Great Bubble Barrier" are presented, which aim to filter plastic waste from rivers and oceans. But, of course, effective reduction of plastic waste must start much earlier. To avoid unnecessary packaging and single-use products, a design approach that considers the entire life cycle of a product is necessary.

A dedicated exhibition area in the Vitra Design Museum Gallery is devoted to the topic of recycling. Here, visitors can learn about recycling cycles in an interactive space and experience how valuable and inspiring recycled plastic can be as a new raw material through the "Precious Plastic" project (since 2013) by Dutch designer Dave Hakkens.

Much like in the early days of plastics, many researchers and designers are now working on materials that are not made from fossil fuels but from renewable raw materials, often referred to as bioplastics. As an example, Dutch designers Klarenbeek & Dros are represented with their 2022 3D-printed remake of Peter Ghyczy’s "Garden Egg" (1967) made from algae-based bioplastic. In addition, projects by the British start-up Shellworks, which uses microorganisms for plastic production, and the University of Portsmouth and ETH Zurich, which are testing or developing enzymes for the biological degradation of plastic, are presented.

Overall, the exhibition "Plastic: Rethinking Our World" paints a critical yet nuanced picture of plastic as a material. Interviews conducted specifically for the exhibition with designers, scientists, and activists highlight how essential the collective efforts of policymakers, industry, and researchers are in solving the plastic problem. However, even with personal commitment from everyone, there will be no simple silver bullet. The focus is therefore on illustrating these complex interconnections and asking: How did we become so dependent on plastics? Where is plastic essential, and where can it be reduced or replaced? And finally: How can we use plastics more intelligently and sustainably in the future?

#VDMPlastic #VitraDesignMuseum

An exhibition by the Vitra Design Museum,
V&A Dundee and maat, Lisbon

Global Sponsors: NIKE and BASF Creation Center
Main sponsors: fischer and Schwalbe
Thanks to: Design Circle

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