When we are asked to create an authentic, mid-century Soviet setting for the Science Museum's Cosmonauts: Birth of the Space Age, our team travelled to Moscow for inspiration. Hailed by Science Museum director Ian Blatchford as: 'the most audacious and complex exhibition in the history of the Science Museum', it featured 150 items never seen outside Russia, and a bold, geometric setting that drew heavily on both Constructivism and Suprematism for its visual DNA. 

Bold graphics, dynamic artefact displays and distinctive Soviet colourings supported the narrative, which explored the social, cultural and technological advances that underpinned Russia's pioneering space travel programme. We enriched displays with film and TV footage and personal memorabilia from the legends of the time, but these never detracted from the extraordinary objects at the core of the exhibition, including a 5-metre tall LK-3 lunar lander and the battered Vosto-6 capsule in which the first female cosmonaut, Valentina Tereshkova, landed back on Earth. 

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