The space-age designs of the Cold War are to be featured in a new blockbuster show at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Cold War Modern will explore how the international race for space and the drive to be modern influenced design, architecture, film and popular culture on both sides of the Iron Curtain in the post-war years.

Announcing the exhibition today, V&A director Mark Jones said: “This is the first exhibition to explore how the development of Modernism after 1945 was shaped by the Cold War. It was a tremendously exciting period in the history of design, a period we have defined as Cold War Modern.”

It will be the latest in a series of V&A exhibitions that have traced key design movements of the 20th century, from Art Nouveau through to Modernism.

More than 300 exhibits will tell the story of the period between 1945 and 1970. They will include an Apollo mission space-suit, a Sputnik satellite and films such as 2001: A Space Odyssey and Dr Strangelove.

The exhibition will argue that competition between superpowers was played out in the domestic sphere as well as through espionage and the space race.

The ideological clash of communism and capitalism also helped drive rival architectural visions of how cities — many devastated by the Second World War — could be re-built. Schemes such as Stalinallee, a monumental socialist building project in East Berlin, contrasted in style with the more informal Modernist housing projects in the West by architects such as Le Corbusier.

Curator Jane Pavitt said: “It's not a show just about the space race but one of the key things is how the hi-tech development and acceleration of technology [associated with space] communicates and powers the utopian visions of Modernist architects and designers. We try to do more than talk about the silver foil look of the space age but look at by-products such as satellite communication and the development of the information age.”

There will be furniture such as Eames chairs made from “modern” materials like fibreglass and futuristic designs in everything from fashion to buildings.

Alongside the optimism of the period was the threat of nuclear destruction and the disquieting undertone of the arms race. The exhibition will show how artists from Pablo Picasso to Robert Rauschenberg reflected these concerns. In some cases, artists produced propaganda such as anti-nuclear posters.

The exhibition will end with the first photographs of earth taken from space.

Cold War Modern: Design 1945-1979 runs from 25 September to 11 January