I recently visited the Design Museum to check out Extraordinary Stories about Ordinary Things – and I can highly recommend it – it’s on until January 2015, so you’ve got plenty of time! The exhibition includes just a tiny extract of the UK’s only collection devoted entirely to modern design and architecture; and it will be changing to showcase more of the collection, so it’s worth repeat visits. Six “design stories” offer a diverse look at the history of contemporary design and include furniture, products, fashion, transport design and architecture alongside a selection of prototypes (including the first Anglepoise prototype – then called ‘Equipoise’), models and specially commissioned films.
I think the most important message from this exhibition is that design isn’t about making things look pretty and it’s not about “starchitects” and designer labels – it about the things that are all around us, the things that work – it’s about chairs, and lights, and phone boxes and sign posts and typewriters and computers and radios… and more chairs!
Further reading for the especially geeky:
- out and about :: bethan gray inside design
- out and about :: lesser known architecture
- out and about :: citizen m
- out and about :: helsinki
