New horizons
As museums and permanent exhibitions dedicated to design pop up all over the place, Geraldine Kendall Adams investigates how the subject is being reinterpreted for the 21st century
In 1852, the London public had the opportunity to attend an exhibition that was to become part of museum folklore: the Gallery of False Principles in Design. The gallery, which was the inaugural show of what later became the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), was dedicated to telling visitors what constituted good and bad design.
It didn’t last long – some manufacturers understandably took insult and pulled their objects from display – but the exhibition succeeded in capturing the public imagination. A short story published at the time describes a hapless bank clerk wandering through the gallery; as he learns about the “correct principles of taste”, he slowly comes to the dreadful realisation that he has been living in a house full of design horrors, complete with wallpaper featuring, to his shame, “four kinds of birds of paradise”.
Design has undergone several revolutions since the days of Victorian didacticism, as has museum practice. It’s not so much about telling visitors what’s right and wrong in their homes any more, but about looking at the ubiquitous yet often invisible role design plays in shaping everyday life. Now, a new crop of museums and exhibition spaces dedicated to the subject are once more rewriting the rules on how design should be collected, displayed and interpreted. This year will see the opening of two buildings dedicated to different forms of design: the Royal Institute of British Architects (Riba) North in Liverpool and the new home for London’s Design Museum in the former Commonwealth Institute in west London.
Meanwhile, the National Museum of Scotland (NMS) will open 10 galleries devoted to design, art and science on 8 July after a £14.1m renovation. In the longer term, the V&A is overseeing the creation of two new institutions, the V&A Museum of Design, Dundee, which opens in 2017, and V&A East at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in east London, due for completion in 2021.
The boom is not just happening in London. The Cooper Hewitt Institute in New York recently underwent a major makeover, while the construction of a new V&A is under way in Shekou, China. And Swiss architects Herzog and de Meuron (who have just completed the Tate Modern extension) recently finished work on an addition to Vitra’s design campus in Weil am Rhein in Germany, the Vitra Schaudepot, which shows the museum’s vast design collection.
Setting the tone
So what can the public expect from these reimagined spaces and how will they differ from what’s gone before?
“We’re going back to our roots,” says Gordon Rintoul, the director of NMS. “The museum was founded 150 years ago as the National Museum of Science and Art to show off the latest developments in design, fashion, science and technology from across Europe. We’re going back to that concept.”
The new galleries may look to the past for inspiration, but they’ll be using cutting edge technology to bring drama to the displays. “Art and design galleries can sometimes feel a bit static,” says Rintoul. “We’ve made dozens of films to bring the displays to life.” Audiovisual projections will feature glassblowers and other makers at work, engaging visitors in the skills and creative processes involved in making the objects on display.
The museum is moving away from traditional displays of applied art, Rintoul says. “Too often, design museums tend to lay too much emphasis on nice, beautiful things,” he says. “We want to look at the interplay between design and technology, for example, how technology is being designed to enhance the lives of people with disabilities. We’ll have a carbon-fibre wheelchair on display.”
This focus on design in its broadest sense will permeate every gallery, showing the importance of design principles to everything from fashion to science and engineering. The museum is making a film that will document the design and build of the new bridge, currently mid-construction, across the River Forth. NMS’s public programming will also include “meet the maker” sessions to bring the public into contact with designers in different fields.
Fitting in
North of Edinburgh, work on the £80m V&A Museum of Design, Dundee, is well under way. Designed by the Japanese architect Kengo Kuma, the venue will focus on the rich history of Scottish design. Although the V&A is behind the project, the new institution is intended to be more than an outpost of the London museum and will have its own identity. The architecturally bold, waterfront building aims to regenerate Dundee’s historic port and put the city on the map for international visitors.
However, the museum’s director, Philip Long, is aware of the importance of embedding the museum in the local community. “If there wasn’t a sense of ownership in the city before we open that would be a great shame,” says Long. “We don’t want it to be arriving here as if it’s an alien spaceship – we want Dundonians to feel pride in it and want to show it off.”
To that end, the museum has been undertaking an extensive range of public programming in the four years ahead of the museum’s opening to engage as wide an audience as possible. Initiatives include a travelling exhibition of digital design that has already visited more than 70 locations across Scotland, a school design challenge and a community garden on the waterfront that will be created and cared for by people with mental health problems.
The museum is also a lead partner in the city’s new Dundee Design Festival, which was inaugurated in May this year. “We have an ambition to be a living room for the city, with a range of activities that will give the museum life and relevance to people,” says Long.
That includes input from the public about how the exhibits will look, projects that involve people in the making process, as well as a “fleet of foot” gallery that will focus on contemporary, up-to-the-minute design. “Rather than simply exhibiting, we want to have a conversation with people that will carry on informing the museum’s content long after it opens,” says Long.
One of the museum’s key strands is “design-led business innovation”, a programme that will demonstrate to businesses how design and creativity can enhance business practice. This will enable the museum to play a pivotal role in Dundee council’s ambitious plans to establish the city as an international centre for design.
“The museum will change people’s attitudes to Dundee,” says Long. “Sensational things should happen off the back of it.”
Global hub for creativity
The Design Museum in London is another institution hoping a new building will give it the scope to become more ambitious. The museum’s long-anticipated relocation to south Kensington, where it opens on 24 November, will more than triple its exhibition space to 10,000 sq m and enable the institution to offer free entry to its permanent collection. The museum’s old home in Shad Thames was badly served by public transport, and the move will enable it to reach a wider range of people, says the museum’s director, Deyan Sudjic.
As well as its public displays, the new museum aims to establish itself as a worldwide hub for creativity and innovation, with a learning foundation and auditorium. It will give audiences a “fresh insight into design from the point of view of the designer and maker, as well as the user”, says Sudjic. “We see our role as offering multiple perspectives on design. It is both a cultural concern and a commercial one. It is not about saying what is good and bad design, and not only about chairs or objects.”
The building is a piece of architectural history itself: once home to the Commonwealth Institute, the Grade II*-listed modernist structure was an empty shell for a decade before the museum engaged the architect John Pawson to reimagine the space.
“Conservation strategies were developed for cathedrals and ancient monuments, not for mid-century concrete roofs with woodwool lining,” says Sudjic. “It’s been great to see Pawson bring it all back to life – I used to go there as a child. Before we started work it was almost a ruin, with an indoor lake.”
A key challenge facing design museums has always been to find ways of showing how ordinary, mundane objects are remarkable – displaying the ephemera of everyday life without resembling a department store.
In the digital era, that challenge has moved into a new realm – museum collections must keep up with the lightning pace of innovation in digital design, such as phones and tablets, while also finding ways to engage jaded, tech-savvy visitors who are more familiar with visual design than ever before.
But the physical space of a museum brings a distinct advantage, says Sudjic, as it allows institutions to offer unique, lived experiences that can’t be found online.
The new-look Design Museum will be a blend of the material and the digital, he adds, telling the story of what technology is doing to our way of life.
“We have a younger, more tech-literate audience than most museums, as demonstrated by our 2.3m-plus Twitter followers,” says Sudjic. “Museum-going has to offer audiences a reason to leave their screens and mobiles behind, and experience something special in our space.”
The project’s managers are in the process of recruiting a curator of digital design, who will face the challenge of curating what Ince says is a vast subject.
“A lot of digital technology and systems are intangible. The museum is addressing what it means to be a digital practice – what do we collect? There are a lot of creative people in fields of design that aren’t represented in museums, such as game design.”
It is early days for the project and many questions remain unanswered. “We’re doing a lot of research about this broad area of practice,” Ince adds.
There will be speakers from the Design Museum and the V&A at the Museums Association Conference in Glasgow (7-9 November).
It didn’t last long – some manufacturers understandably took insult and pulled their objects from display – but the exhibition succeeded in capturing the public imagination. A short story published at the time describes a hapless bank clerk wandering through the gallery; as he learns about the “correct principles of taste”, he slowly comes to the dreadful realisation that he has been living in a house full of design horrors, complete with wallpaper featuring, to his shame, “four kinds of birds of paradise”.
Design has undergone several revolutions since the days of Victorian didacticism, as has museum practice. It’s not so much about telling visitors what’s right and wrong in their homes any more, but about looking at the ubiquitous yet often invisible role design plays in shaping everyday life. Now, a new crop of museums and exhibition spaces dedicated to the subject are once more rewriting the rules on how design should be collected, displayed and interpreted. This year will see the opening of two buildings dedicated to different forms of design: the Royal Institute of British Architects (Riba) North in Liverpool and the new home for London’s Design Museum in the former Commonwealth Institute in west London.
Meanwhile, the National Museum of Scotland (NMS) will open 10 galleries devoted to design, art and science on 8 July after a £14.1m renovation. In the longer term, the V&A is overseeing the creation of two new institutions, the V&A Museum of Design, Dundee, which opens in 2017, and V&A East at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in east London, due for completion in 2021.
The boom is not just happening in London. The Cooper Hewitt Institute in New York recently underwent a major makeover, while the construction of a new V&A is under way in Shekou, China. And Swiss architects Herzog and de Meuron (who have just completed the Tate Modern extension) recently finished work on an addition to Vitra’s design campus in Weil am Rhein in Germany, the Vitra Schaudepot, which shows the museum’s vast design collection.
We see our role as offering multiple perspectives on design. It is both cultural and commercial. It is not about saying what is good and bad design, and not only about chairs or objects."
Setting the tone
So what can the public expect from these reimagined spaces and how will they differ from what’s gone before?
“We’re going back to our roots,” says Gordon Rintoul, the director of NMS. “The museum was founded 150 years ago as the National Museum of Science and Art to show off the latest developments in design, fashion, science and technology from across Europe. We’re going back to that concept.”
The new galleries may look to the past for inspiration, but they’ll be using cutting edge technology to bring drama to the displays. “Art and design galleries can sometimes feel a bit static,” says Rintoul. “We’ve made dozens of films to bring the displays to life.” Audiovisual projections will feature glassblowers and other makers at work, engaging visitors in the skills and creative processes involved in making the objects on display.
The museum is moving away from traditional displays of applied art, Rintoul says. “Too often, design museums tend to lay too much emphasis on nice, beautiful things,” he says. “We want to look at the interplay between design and technology, for example, how technology is being designed to enhance the lives of people with disabilities. We’ll have a carbon-fibre wheelchair on display.”
This focus on design in its broadest sense will permeate every gallery, showing the importance of design principles to everything from fashion to science and engineering. The museum is making a film that will document the design and build of the new bridge, currently mid-construction, across the River Forth. NMS’s public programming will also include “meet the maker” sessions to bring the public into contact with designers in different fields.
Fitting in
North of Edinburgh, work on the £80m V&A Museum of Design, Dundee, is well under way. Designed by the Japanese architect Kengo Kuma, the venue will focus on the rich history of Scottish design. Although the V&A is behind the project, the new institution is intended to be more than an outpost of the London museum and will have its own identity. The architecturally bold, waterfront building aims to regenerate Dundee’s historic port and put the city on the map for international visitors.
However, the museum’s director, Philip Long, is aware of the importance of embedding the museum in the local community. “If there wasn’t a sense of ownership in the city before we open that would be a great shame,” says Long. “We don’t want it to be arriving here as if it’s an alien spaceship – we want Dundonians to feel pride in it and want to show it off.”
To that end, the museum has been undertaking an extensive range of public programming in the four years ahead of the museum’s opening to engage as wide an audience as possible. Initiatives include a travelling exhibition of digital design that has already visited more than 70 locations across Scotland, a school design challenge and a community garden on the waterfront that will be created and cared for by people with mental health problems.
The museum is also a lead partner in the city’s new Dundee Design Festival, which was inaugurated in May this year. “We have an ambition to be a living room for the city, with a range of activities that will give the museum life and relevance to people,” says Long.
That includes input from the public about how the exhibits will look, projects that involve people in the making process, as well as a “fleet of foot” gallery that will focus on contemporary, up-to-the-minute design. “Rather than simply exhibiting, we want to have a conversation with people that will carry on informing the museum’s content long after it opens,” says Long.
One of the museum’s key strands is “design-led business innovation”, a programme that will demonstrate to businesses how design and creativity can enhance business practice. This will enable the museum to play a pivotal role in Dundee council’s ambitious plans to establish the city as an international centre for design.
“The museum will change people’s attitudes to Dundee,” says Long. “Sensational things should happen off the back of it.”
Global hub for creativity
The Design Museum in London is another institution hoping a new building will give it the scope to become more ambitious. The museum’s long-anticipated relocation to south Kensington, where it opens on 24 November, will more than triple its exhibition space to 10,000 sq m and enable the institution to offer free entry to its permanent collection. The museum’s old home in Shad Thames was badly served by public transport, and the move will enable it to reach a wider range of people, says the museum’s director, Deyan Sudjic.
As well as its public displays, the new museum aims to establish itself as a worldwide hub for creativity and innovation, with a learning foundation and auditorium. It will give audiences a “fresh insight into design from the point of view of the designer and maker, as well as the user”, says Sudjic. “We see our role as offering multiple perspectives on design. It is both a cultural concern and a commercial one. It is not about saying what is good and bad design, and not only about chairs or objects.”
The building is a piece of architectural history itself: once home to the Commonwealth Institute, the Grade II*-listed modernist structure was an empty shell for a decade before the museum engaged the architect John Pawson to reimagine the space.
“Conservation strategies were developed for cathedrals and ancient monuments, not for mid-century concrete roofs with woodwool lining,” says Sudjic. “It’s been great to see Pawson bring it all back to life – I used to go there as a child. Before we started work it was almost a ruin, with an indoor lake.”
A key challenge facing design museums has always been to find ways of showing how ordinary, mundane objects are remarkable – displaying the ephemera of everyday life without resembling a department store.
In the digital era, that challenge has moved into a new realm – museum collections must keep up with the lightning pace of innovation in digital design, such as phones and tablets, while also finding ways to engage jaded, tech-savvy visitors who are more familiar with visual design than ever before.
But the physical space of a museum brings a distinct advantage, says Sudjic, as it allows institutions to offer unique, lived experiences that can’t be found online.
The new-look Design Museum will be a blend of the material and the digital, he adds, telling the story of what technology is doing to our way of life.
“We have a younger, more tech-literate audience than most museums, as demonstrated by our 2.3m-plus Twitter followers,” says Sudjic. “Museum-going has to offer audiences a reason to leave their screens and mobiles behind, and experience something special in our space.”
V&A East: champion of digital design
The £141m V&A East plans to create the UK’s first galleries dedicated to documenting the “full breadth of digital design”. Designed jointly by architects Allies & Morrison and O’Donnell & Tuomey, the museum will span seven storeys and be a central part of the cultural quarter being built at the site of the 2012 Olympics in east London. The museum intends to be “more responsive to what’s going on in the world”, says the project’s senior curator Catherine Ince, and will have a strong focus on contemporary collecting. The project’s managers are in the process of recruiting a curator of digital design, who will face the challenge of curating what Ince says is a vast subject.
“A lot of digital technology and systems are intangible. The museum is addressing what it means to be a digital practice – what do we collect? There are a lot of creative people in fields of design that aren’t represented in museums, such as game design.”
It is early days for the project and many questions remain unanswered. “We’re doing a lot of research about this broad area of practice,” Ince adds.
There will be speakers from the Design Museum and the V&A at the Museums Association Conference in Glasgow (7-9 November).