Plastic
Remaking Our World
Plastics have shaped our daily lives like no other material. From food containers to electronic devices, from furniture to cars, from fashion to prefab buildings. With their almost limitless malleability, versatility, and economic production, plastics have spurred the imagination of designers and architects for decades. While they have been associated with convenience, progress, and even revolution, in recent years, they have lost their utopian appeal. Plastics are omnipresent – often as waste.
Moving away from a linear economy towards a circular one will require a combination of different strategies and approaches: mechanical, chemical, and biological recycling; a shift from oil-based plastics to plastics that are based on renewable resources and are biodegradable; reduction of single-use plastics. Lastly, legislation will need to support all these developments.
The Vitra Design Museum devotes a major exhibition to the utopian appeal of plastics and to the current challenges that need to be tackled by design, science, and politics. The exhibition » Plastic: Remaking Our World« examines the rise of plastic during the course of the twentieth century, its present eco -logical consequences as well as current research and design projects towards a new, sustainable use of the material in the future.
An exhibition by the Vitra Design Museum, V&A Dundee and maat, Lisbon
Space
600 – 1,200 m² / 6,000 – 12,000 sq ft
Curatorial Team
Vitra Design Museum:
Jochen Eisenbrand, Mea Hoffmann
V&A Dundee:
Charlotte Hale, Laurie Bassam
maat, Lisbon:
Anniina Koivu
Consultant Curators:
V&A:
Johanna Agerman Ross, Corinna Gardner
Exhibition Design
Asif Khan
Graphic Design
Daniel Streat, Visual Fields
Detailed information
Illustrated Concept
Exhibition Film
Exhibition Tour
26.03.2022 – 04.09.2022, Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein, Germany
29.10.2022 – 05.02.2023, V&A Dundee, Dundee, United Kingdom
22.03.2023 – 11.09.2023, maat, Lisbon, Portugal
27.01.2024 – 23.06.2024, National Museum of Singapore
09.08.2024 – May 2025, Hyundai Motorstudio, Busan, Korea
For further information please contact Cora.Harris@design-museum.de.
