Design Museum Project

As the new Design Museum In London opens for the first time on November 24th in its new home in West London, final year GMD students are working with the museum on a project around the permanent collection.

“My project focuses on how workshops could help to educate more teenagers about the importance of design and the way in which designers work. The Design Museum is trying to keep design in the general public’s mind’s eye, my project aims to build on this at a grassroots level. The updated museum and the free permanent collection will allow a wider audience and more opportunity for situating the Design Museum as possibly the most important museum of its type in the world.”  – GMD student Tim Lucraft

“I am working on a simulated experience to get people involved with design objects from the new Design Museum. Visitors will be able to share their personal things with the rest of the community via a digital library of scanned objects. The Museum would then become a platform of interaction between people of different social backgrounds.” – GMD Student Sam BlochThe new space will be more than three times the size of the current museum, at 9,80m², and will include three floors of special exhibitions and a Permanent Collection of Design. There will be three gallery spaces, a library and archive, a learning centre with workshop space, two events spaces and an auditorium for talks and seminars. There will also be a separate Design Museum High Street Shop next to the museum entrance. 

The project has a special significance for GMD Tutor Sarah Temple, who set up the collaboration,  “I am especially excited to work on this project for the Permanent Collection with Josephine Chanter as I worked on the very first exhibition at the Design Museum Shad Thames, Commerce & Culture, with Stephen Bailey when I left the RCA in the late 80’s and whilst employed by David Davies Associates. The new museum is stunning.”

Design director Deyan Sudjic says the new museum will aim to be a “bridge between the V&A and the Science Museum” and encourage greater public engagement with design. “We want this to be the definitive museum of contemporary design and architecture,” says Sudjic. “We want to make the wider world feel part of this. Design is so central to people’s lives – we need to do what the Tate Modern does, but with design.”

“We’re putting users at the centre of the displays and making it about people, not just objects,” according to Alice Black, Deputy Director. “It’s important for us to put across this message of design as our visual culture.”
http://designmuseum.org