2001: A Space Odyssey Method

In order to depict daily life in the year 2001, Kubrick collaborated with numerous businesses (1), asking them to imagine clothing, furniture, tools and communications of the future.

The aim of these commercial partnerships was cinematographic: to firmly set the film in a realistic technological universe. Made in 1968, 2001: A Space Odyssey shows not only an original journey in the cosmos (Neil Armstrong and 'Buzz' Aldrin would not walk on the moon until a year later) but also the astronauts' almost banal daily routine. Both had to be credible.

Honeywell came up with a portable computer model and thought about the technological constraints linked to interplanetary travel. Eliot Noyes, an IBM consultant, imagined the design of HAL and invented the soft keyboards integrated into the astronauts' sleeves. General Electric, Hewlett-Packard, Marconi, AT&T and many others designed the various machines present onboard the spaceships, while Hamilton created the watch of the future, and Parker imagined an atomic pen containing a nuclear reactor.

Although some of these objects appear quite far from our daily life, others have become an integral part of it: the portable computer, screens in seatbacks, the American Express credit card (2) or conversations via videophone. The inventions linked to advances in miniaturisation and communication tools will remain the most pertinent (to put this futuristic conceptualising into better perspective, let us recall that, at the time, a computer of equal or even lesser power than that of a modern PC occupied an entire room!).

As concerns the costumes, Vogue magazine suggested that Kubrick work with British fashion designers Mary Quant then Sir Hardy Amies. The "stewardesses" uniforms were inspired by the creations of André Courrèges and Betty Barclay. While some objects are "period", such as Olivier Mourgue's Djinn chairs (1964), the kitchen unit on the Discovery was imagined by the Whirlpool Co., and the passenger cabin of the spaceship Orion by Pan American World Airways, designed by the team of decorator-designer Tony Masters.