A stunning retro space age house perfect for today

Space-age styles have skyrocketed in pop culture, including celebrities’ homes, global design fairs, and even blockbuster films. Looking back at the stunning retro-futistic origins of 2025’s biggest interior aesthetic, why now?

From aerodynamic cars to the vast moonscape style seats, popular culture and design have become the universe. Some architects, designers, filmmakers and galleries are looking for their inspiration, not Star Wars’ “Galaxy, far away,” but at least beyond the atmosphere of the earth.

Marvel Studios’ latest film will be released in July. Fantastic Four: The First Stepboasts a living room with a circular sink sofa arrangement and a shiny white round side table and an oversized finned car. It’s not the typical styling of an action-adventure blockbuster.

Here, in the real world, leading US interior designers make space age aesthetics extremely fashionable. Based in La and Milan, Giampiero Tagliaferi is one of the designers who support the “California Space Age” aesthetic for the home of technology moguls, art collectors, fashion creatives and pop stars. One such thing has a shiny white futuristic spiral staircase that would not have been out of place in Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

And American interior designer Kelly Wearstra herself Malibu Beach House The 1970s sofa and Chase Longu are filled with space-age designs like Afra and Tobias Carpa, and space-age designs like Ignazio Gardera’s four-footed 1957 Digamma Chair.

Meanwhile, furniture brands like Pauline, Pauline and Pauline quickly spotted trends. The family business has been reissuing space-age designs by influential French furniture designer Pierre Pauline since the early 1970s. In particular, his dune ensemble Modular seating arrangement Planetary surface echoes have become a favorite among the types of music industry and influencers. Famous private singer Frank Ocean, bassist Free of Red Hot Chili Peppers, rappers Travis Scott, Justin Bieber and Kim Kardashian are all reported to have one.

The Gallery and Design Fair feature this retro-future stick nostalgia. The museum exhibits science fiction designs ranging from space age to metaverse. Explore how space-age designers have provided film directors with the ideal furniture for science fiction films. Olivier Murg’s 1960s gin seat series: A Space Odyssey; Barry Sonnenfeld’s 1971 tomato chair (1997); Pauline’s 1966 ribbon chair in Dennis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049 (2017).

This spring’s Milan Design Week, the hottest tickets were for installations created by fashion house Loro Piana and painful cool furniture designer Dimoristudio. In La Prima Notte di Quiete, they presented a kind of idealized film 1970s apartment that was pure Italo California Space Age Chic: Sinking conversation pits, round beds, cascades of light on cubic walls, retro seats, electric green carpet.

Space-age styling was also on display at the vast Brafa Art Fair in Brussels. Every year, Delen Private Bank, with an extraordinary collection of modernist art and mid-century furniture, creates a series of rooms at the fair as the ultimate apartment. This time, the wisest room was in the pure space age. The red glossy walls of the Visiona exhibition at Berner Pantone are its most space-age symbols: Joe Colombo Elda Chair.

Of course, this aesthetic has its roots in the first space race that began when the Soviets launched the Sputnik satellite in 1957 and continued with NASA’s Apollo program throughout the 1960s. These events dominated global media, and people all over the world unconsciously accepted the idea that humanity had entered a new era. “It seemed natural that objects and spaces should reflect this,” Peter Martin, author Space Age Design: Movement Iconstell the BBC.

In the background, prewar design and architecture suddenly seemed outdated. Instead, the height of the cool was a positive refinement of the Eroarnio paro or ball chair, the ideal 1963 paro or ball chair placed inside a modernist home.

And it wasn’t just furniture that was leaning towards this space age heat. The cars grew large tail fins, and the airport began to resemble spacecrafts, like Eero Saarinen’s TWA flight center in New York.

This trend accelerated when the moon landed in the late 1960s, and was reflected in television and film. 2001: Space Odyssey, the iconic TV series Star Trek. In music, there was a Telstar single due to a tornado, and in fashion, several designers announced Futuristic looksIncludes Pacoravanne’s iconic 1968 Gold Chain Space Age dress.

There was also a practical reason for the popularity of space-age designs. It arrived with the advent of newly available materials developed during the war era, and by the mid-1950s it was finding ways to head to a new generation of designer workshops and studios.

For a while, plastic has become synonymous with what we now consider to be space age designers. Christina Barguna, head of the Design Museum Brussels plastic design collection, said in Martin’s book, “In the 1950s, plastic represents possibilities, freedom, joy. It represents freedom of shape. Creating new furniture, the possibility of offering a new home – the materials that spoke to a new generation have become the future.

Another factor was mass production. This pivoted towards a burgeoning consumer culture that exploded during the war era and then burgeoning. The well-versed designers formed alliances with the manufacturer. “The space age design story is, in many ways, a story of a designer-maker partnership: Joe Colombo and the Cartel, Nord and Ero Saarinen, Vitra and Werner Pantone, Elasto Gran and Peter Gixie,” writes Martin in space age design.

The peak of space-age design came just after the moon landing. “I know that what seemed like the beginning of things was actually the end of things. We didn’t leave the moon anytime soon and return,” says Martin.

At this point, space was the hottest topic, and global mainstream interests injected massive shots of energy into space-age design and influence. It was seen everywhere, from the strangeness of David Bowie’s space (released a month after landing) to the videosphere television sold in JVC’s space.

And when it seemed reasonable to assume we would live in space within decades, the designers thought of what it would look like.

Sofa design is a typical example. “Modular sofas have been around since the 1940s, but now they’re vast, heroic and made for a wonderful, futuristic lifestyle,” says Martin. There was a rigid foam. It had a wrapping, sensual, organic shape. These were sofas in statements that could belong to villas on Lake Como or a space station orbiting the moon. He sat upright. The sofa was for sleeping, socializing and parties.

From this era, two giants have come to whom you can claim for the space-age design movement. Iconic 1973 Togo Designed by Michel Ducaloi for the Ligne Rosette. Mario Bellini in Italy, B&B by Camarenda in 1972. Both are still in production and have remained extremely popular ever since.

And now the aesthetics are back. A sense of rediscovery, a massive dose of nostalgia, and a sense of new competition all contribute to the revival of space-age design.

The nostalgia of the space race itself was kicked off in 2022, when it sold for $2.8 million (£2.3 million) at Sotheby’s in New York. Since then, space memorabilia has become a huge market. And last year, Tom Hanks’ immersive Shaw Moonwalkers – a reenactment of the Apollo mission – was a major attraction in London’s Lightroom.

“This is what the era represents. The pioneering sensibilities of the West embraced the future with a sense of mission,” says Martin.

Feeding this interest in the first space age is the fact that we are now in the second cusp. NASA’s Artemis program was back on the moon, with the first human landing in 2027 since the 1970s. This time, the race is international, with China, India and private US companies competing for space advantage.

This manifests itself in the vibrant designs of several regions, including the works of Chinese-born Peng Zheng (now senior product designer at Zoom in California) and Eason Zhu (founder of Hangzhou’s multidisciplinary design studio Fununit Design & More).

Designers like these “create a vision of a new way of life that is not completely hampered by the baggage of what they have done before,” says Martin.