Cold War Modern

I recently managed to go to a fantastic exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum called Cold War Modern. I’m interested in both the Cold War and design so it was interesting to see how each affected the other. The competition between East and West drove a period of significant progress and promises of a utopian future, best encapsulated by the race into space. There was a Sputnik replica at the entrance to the exhibition (which I managed to miss and had to go back to see!) as well as lots of other interesting design icons.

It was interesting to see the way the climate had affected design and vice versa: how design had been used to push Western and Eastern ideals. My favourite example from the exhibition was the comparison of Stalinallee in Eastern Berlin with Interbau in the West.

Architecture in Stalinallee, now Karl-Marx-Allee. Photo by Mishkabear.

The architecture of Interbau is different, but with similar objectives. Photo by seier+seier+seier.

The V&A is a fantastic museum in itself and I only saw a small fraction of it whilst there. There’s no charge for admission to the museum, although you need to buy a ticket to get in to the exhibition. Cold War Modern is open until the 11th of January.