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Design Museum

Design and modern society created one another. Before the late eighteenth century craftsmen made their products in the way they wanted to make them. There was very rarely a separate person designing the product for someone else to make. With the advent of mass production a group of people came into being who created products, which were then produced by increasingly mechanised means. Some people, William Morris for example, were concerned about this, thinking that industrialised production would stifle individual creativity. Morris set up the Arts and Crafts movement as a result. By the beginning of the twentieth century, however, it was clear that the hand made products made by Arts and Crafts methods were really only affordable by the rich. It also became clear that mass production was not incompatible with either creativity or beauty. The American architect and designer Frank Lloyd Wright believed that industrialised production was "capable of carrying to fruition high ideals in art" and "ultimately to emancipate human expression." Meanwhile new groups such as the Deutscher Werkbund, founded in 1907came together to develop high quality designs for mass production. The First World War turned some people against industrialism for a while, with its connotations of mechanised slaughter. Even the great designer Walter Gropius felt like this temporally. But by the 1920s the commitment to rational mass produced design had returned.

The Design Museum is a clear demonstration of the potential of design. There are many beautiful, functional things on display. When I visited I wandered past chairs and tables, book covers, TV programme opening sequences, posters, racing cars, textiles, ceramics. I saw scrunched plastic vending machine cups that were made out of china. I saw mugs decorated with book covers, and bought one. The feeling is not one of stifled creativity, but more of the emancipation of human expression that Frank Lloyd Wright talked about.

 

 

The Design Museum has regularly changing exhibitions, and offers a comprehensive range of talks, lectures, courses, school activities, and competitions. There is a gift shop and a tearoom.

 

Opening Times: The Design Museum is open daily from 10am to 5:45pm, last admission at 5:15pm. Closed 25th and 26th December and early closing, at 1:30pm on Christmas Eve.

Directions: The Design Museum is on the south bank of the Thames, at the end of the Shad Thames. Go to London Bridge Station and walk east along the Thames path, past Tower Bridge, and down the Shad Thames with its historic warehouse architecture. The Design Museum will be facing you. Click here for an interactive road and satellite map centred on the Design Museum.

 

 

Quotation from Soichiro Honda, at an exhibition of Formula 1 motor racing design in 2006.

Access: all areas of the museum are accessible by wheelchair, and there are adapted toilet facilities. A wheelchair is available from the admissions desk. Two disabled parking bays are provided on the Shad Thames. Facilities for those with sight difficulties are available.

Contact:

phone: 0870 9099009

web site: www.designmuseum.org