Artist Carsten Höller has never underestimated the potential fun factor in unusual forms. The former student of phyto-pathology has affinities for aphids, Russian utopianism, mushrooms, dynamism in mechanisms, playground slides, and games of all sorts. With this outlandish blending, Höller allows the viewer not only to rollick a bit more than usual, but to also see the world differently.

For his collaboration with the Nymphenburg Porzellan Manufaktur, Höller has created a tableware set titled “Flying City,” named after Russian architect Georgy Tikhonovich Krutikov’s 1928 design for a hovering live/work unit of futuristic proportions. Supported by the Soviet ASNOVA (Association of New Architects), Krutikov, like many of his contemporaries, envisioned urban satellites powered by atomic energy and drifting high above earth, which was already becoming progressively more polluted. Flying City would have constituted a pre-suburban top elevation, or what Rodchencko called the “fifth wall.” Quixotic as it may seem, Flying City was no Laputa: Krutikov was dead serious. Höller also used the Flying City motif for the blue Portuguese azulejo tiles in London’s 2008 Congolese/Western pop-up restaurant, the Double Club.

In addition to the Krutikov images, Höller has also used a pictorial model of the English toy manufacturer Charles Benham’s 19th-century Benham top, a black-and-white Constructivistesque pattern that, when spun rapidly, flickers with color—a still unexplained phenomenon. To accompany the premiere of the set in Rotterdam, Höller constructed a pulley contraption that wheels the plates to the top’s same vertiginous effect. When the table’s set, however, the diner will have to settle for contemplating past futures from a dinner party on earth, or simply imagine extracting color from what we normally believe is only able to generate shades of gray.