Design hawkeyes will have noticed it: As Michelle Fuller, Bugonia\u2019s unusual CEO character played by an in-form Emma Stone<\/a>, stomps towards her desk in one of the movie\u2019s early scenes, she flits past seating arrangements of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe\u2019s iconic Barcelona chairs. They\u2019re hard to miss with their cantilevered steel bases, signature boxy leather cushions and late midcentury corporate grandeur. At first, they\u2019re black. As Michelle gets closer to her glassed office, they\u2019re white.<\/p>\n From Michelle\u2019s professional environment to her ultra-modernist home, design pieces by notable names like van der Rohe, Frank Lloyd Wright<\/a>, Jan Bo\u010dan, and more can be found throughout Bugonia. By the end of the film\u2014when (spoiler alert) we learn that Michelle is indeed the alien she\u2019s feared to be, and the reason for mankind\u2019s extinction\u2014one might suspect that director Yorgos Lanthimos<\/a> and production designer James Price were intentionally toying with the idea of vaunted versus embodied humanity via the sets. The suggestion seems to be that this masked extraterrestrial character uses design in part as proof of her authenticity, yet the objects she surrounds herself with carry a chilly reserve and an efficient immaculateness. Inhuman in their stature and presentation, they\u2019re hints that Michelle might be overcompensating.<\/p>\n Michelle\u2019s glass-clad office in Bugonia<\/p>\n <\/span>Photo: Atsushi Nishijima\/Focus Features. \u00a9 2025 All Rights Reserved.<\/span><\/div>\n \u201cI would almost liken the pieces we included to trophies,\u201d Price tells AD. \u201cYou could take these examples as pinnacles of human civilization. So much so that Yorgos wasn\u2019t keen on us even having reproductions.\u201d<\/p>\n Michelle, then, seems to have collected these items as a kind of physical highlight reel of human creativity\u2013and therefore, as subtle self-validation of her humanity. Yet the irony is that once possessed, trophies become static, and even cold, objects. In trying to appear human through idealization, she adds\u2026 well, something of a chill to the room. (This isn\u2019t a dig at these pieces, but an observation of her exaggeration.)<\/p>\n![\"Image](\"https:\/\/media.architecturaldigest.com\/photos\/69b46dd85dbb6bff99959479\/master\/w_1600%2Cc_limit\/4243_D005_00004.jpg\"\/)
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