Poster Sixties Design; © Schloß Schönbrunn Kultur- und Betriebsges.m.b.H. / Hannes Eder

Reclining violin, Oskar Hodosi, 1968; © Bundesmobilienverwaltung / Hofmobiliendepot; Photo: L. Lammerhuber

Furniture design forms the focus of the exhibition but will be complemented by fashion items, television and radio sets together with other everyday objects to convey the typical flavour of life during those years. 

‘Anything goes’ was the motto of the design world during that era. Utopian, alternative lifestyles were accompanied by a fundamental change in values. The new designs in fashion and furnishings reflected the rapid change in perspective adopted by a young adventurous generation that aban¬doned itself to a hitherto unknown visual and emotional sensuality, exploring and trying out new materials, strident colours and imaginative forms as well as alternative lifestyles, drugs and pop music. 

This exhibition aims to give a clearly structured account of the ‘messy vitality’ (Robert Venturi) of 1960s design and to illuminate its various aspects.

From the consumer revolution to protest culture

The exhibition focuses on two cultural revolutions that left their mark on the 1960s. The beginning of the decade saw a youth-led ‘consumer revolution’. Full employment and rising incomes favoured the growth of a new kind of consumer – the teenager. The teenage generation’s newly-acquired independence demanded its own forms of expression. New synthetic materials facilitated the making of low-priced products for the mass market. They speeded up changes in fashion and products, leading to a veritable boom in design. Inflatable PVC furniture captured the young generation’s desire for an easy-going, impermanent lifestyle. Belief in new synthetic materials and technologies was still unbroken and found expression in the ‘Space Age’ look. The question of how the generations of the future would live produced futuristic designs and manifested itself in a geometric vocabulary of forms that dominated the first half of the 1960s. The new fixed stars of the design world were Italy and Britain.  

From the mid-1960s a change of mood started to make itself felt. A protest generation of young people and students started a counter-revolution to mobilise against unjust and antiquated systems of power and social constraints. The cold war with its power blocs, both sides armed to the teeth, reinforced fears of nuclear Armageddon. The shameless materialism of consumer culture began to be seen in an increasingly critical light. The Vietnam War, the Prague Spring and the student revolts in Paris all left their mark on design. On the one hand there was a return to established styles such as art nouveau, art deco or arts and crafts which conveyed a sense of comfort and security. This stood in contrast to psychedelic art from West Coast America, which fuelled by drugs, Eastern religions and the hippie lifestyle also manifested itself in design and fashion, with geometric forms yielding to a new, neo-organic aesthetic. The whole notion of the modern world with its belief in progress was challenged, the role of design in capitalistic societies questioned. In Italy the radical notion of ‘anti-design’ arose, in an ironic and symbolic reaction to the new situation. 

At the end of the 1960s the emerging environmental movement in the USA began to raise doubts about the ruthless industrialisation and the lack of sustainability of the Western lifestyle. 1972 saw the publication of the Club of Rome’s report The Limits to Growth, which evoked a huge response. The defining event that marked the end of the age of plastic was the oil crisis of 1973, heralding a re-evaluation of this material in the years that followed.

The exhibition is divided into ten sections: Looking back: the formal language of the 1950s / The geometry of the early 1960s / Spheromania / Space Age design / Fashion / Plastic as material / Pop furniture / Anti-design / Neo-organic design / The end of the boom. 

Among the major designers represented in the exhibition are Arne Jacobsen, Eero Saarinen, Johannes Spalt, Joe Colombo, Hans Hollein, Verner Panton, Vico Magistretti, Walter Pichler, Paco Rabanne, André Courrèges, Helmut Bätzner, Gaetano Pesce, Achille & Pier Giacomo & Livio Castiglioni, Archizoom, Gruppo Strum, Olivier Mourgue and Günter Beltzig.

Details of the exhibition 

Title Sixties Design
Curated by Markus Laumann
Exhibition designed by SPURWIEN Architects
Graphic design by Fuhrer Visuelle Gestaltung og
Head of research Hofmobiliendepot Ilsebill Barta
Marketing Josefa Haselböck
Duration 29 February – 17 June 2012, Open daily except Mondays 10:00 – 18:00 
Location Imperial Furniture Collection, Andreasgasse 7, 1070 Vienna
Admission charges € 7,90 / € 6,50 / € 5,50
Exhibition mounted by Schloß Schönbrunn Kultur- und Betriebsges.m.b.H., Bundesmobilienverwaltung

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