Certain projects require a contextual framework in order to better understand their cultural and chronological placement. The Sputnik Dome, by Tim Power Architects, is such a project. Sputnik ( named after the Russian spacecraft ) was a design collective created by the Japanese design guru Teruo Kurosaki, and got its start in 2000.

Previously, Kurosaki was best known for founding the Tokyo based design company ‘Ideé’, which was at the time, the epicentre of contemporary design in Asia.  Sputnik, like Ideé, encouraged dialogue and cross-fertilization between Japanese and Western designers.

The Sputnik group included Mark Newson, James Irvine, Michael Young, Emanuel Babled and Tim Power together with an equally elite group of Japanese designers. Each designer was free to propose a piece of furniture, lamp or object of their choice. During this period, Tim Power was questioning the role of the designer in what he considered a world containing an overabundance of objects, and was turning his personal interest toward Architecure and Public space. His proposal for Kurosaki was to construct a ‘container’ which would travel the globe, temporally inhabit public space, and serve as an exhibition space for the Sputnik Collection.

The Sputnik Dome was first installed in Milan during the Milan Design Week. At the time, the ‘fuori salone’ was in its infancy, with only a limited number of exhibits located outside of Milan’s official trade fair. With the Sputnik Dome, the Milan Design week as offered for the first time to an enlarged public in an urban space. Following this event, public urban installations become a standard for the Milan Design week, and, in Design weeks across the globe.

The second edition of Sputnik, created in collaboration with Nick Dine, overtook a city block in the New York Soho neighbourhood. This event won the ‘best exhibit’ award for Frame Magazine. By the time the Sputnik Festival opened in Tokyo ( a third was created for the Designer Block in London ), Sputnik’s size had grown. The Sputnik Dome had multiplied and mutated. Sputnik overtook Tokyo’s Ayoma neighbourhood in an urban event which hosted bands, street food, art installations, and collateral events.

Sputnik had become as much of an urban festival as it was a design collective, exemplifying Kurosaki’s vision of design as a potential source for social change.