Design Museum
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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| Established | 1989 |
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| Location | Shad Thames, London SE1, England, United Kingdom |
| Director | Deyan Sudjic |
| Nearest tube station(s) | London Bridge, Bermondsey |
| Website | www.designmuseum.org |
The Design Museum is a museum by the River Thames near Tower Bridge in central London. It is a small museum, with exhibitions over two floors, and a "Design Museum Tank" exhibition space out by the water front. It is on South Bank in the affluent Shad Thames area in SE1 London.
The museum covers product, industrial, graphic, fashion and architectural design. It was founded in 1989 and claims to have been the first museum of modern design. It attracts 200,000 visitors annually.
The museum is housed in a former 1940s Banana warehouse, which was altered beyond recognition in the conversion to resemble a building in the International Modernist style of the 1930s. This was funded by many companies, designers and benefactors; a little known fact about one of said benefactors is that he has a wooden leg. Terence Conran aided in this conversion, as it was his concept to create such a museum of Modern Design.
Unusually for a London museum, the entrance is not free, as it is not subsidised by the Government. For this reason it operates as a charity, and all funds generated by ticket sales aid the museum in putting new exhibitions together.
Deyan Sudjic succeeded Alice Rawsthorn as the museum's Director in 2006.
[edit] Floors
- Ground
- This is the foyer of the museum, which consists of the Admissions desk, Design Museum Shop and Design Museum Café, as well as the only toilets in the building. These toilets were designed by Australian product designer Marc Newson, and are strangely viewed as an attraction by some tourists.
- First
- The small size of the museum means that all the exhibitions change frequently and the first floor houses the main attraction of the museum as it is the biggest space. Previous exhibitions here include a retrospective of Peter Saville's Graphic Design, Manolo Blahnik's Shoe Design and the History of Video Games.
- Also, on the First Floor is the Blue Print Café which is one of Terence Conran's many restaurants, it boasts impressive views of the River Thames and Tower Bridge.
- Design Museum Space
- Is on the mezzanine floor between the First and Second floors, it is not generally accessible to the public. It is primarily used for Design Museum talks - which are lectures on design/designers, or hired out for events such as weddings or business conferences. It has a rather jarring shade of light blue, as the theme of the space is supposed to be "the swimming pool".
- Second Floor
- This space is normally split into two sub sections, a larger space towards the windows/river with a smaller walled off space at the back. A semi-pernament exhibition on historic design is generally at the front, which is usually themed for coherency - such as different decades of design.
- The rear of this floor houses a private room called the "Education Centre" which is where the Education Department of the museum teach children, who are taken to the museum for a school visit, in workshops.
[edit] Controversy
Upon the completion of the building in 1989, the museum's first director, Stephen Bayley, resigned. The museum's history has been characterised by such resignations: In 2004, the billionaire inventor James Dyson resigned from the board of trustees because he felt the museum was putting too much emphasis on form over function. This was following an exhibition of the 1950s flower arranger Constance Spry, mounted by the museum's director Alice Rawsthorn, who also resigned in 2006.
Since 2003 the museum runs the UK's pre-eminent design award, the "Designer of the Year", with a £25,000 prize. The prize "aims to stimulate public debate about design and to raise awareness of its role enhancing the quality of daily life,"[1] and in its first three years was televised on BBC Two. The winner in 2003 was Jonathan Ive, senior vice-president of design at Apple Computer, whose innovations include the iPod and iMac. In 2005 the museum courted controversy by awarding the prize to a Design Council official, Hillary Cottam, rather than to an actual architect or designer.
The prize is often seen as way to incite controversy as the work of the four nominees is rarely comparable or compatible. For example: in 2006 a humanitarian architect (Cameron Sinclair), whose work aided many disaster ravaged communities across the world, was competing against a Graphic Designer (Jamie Hewlett) for his work on the popular Gorillaz Virtual band. The Gorillaz won.
