If You Go Down To The Museum Today...
by Freddie Yauner
There are two products which, as a child, inspired me to want to become a product designer. Firstly there was the Alessi Aldo Rossi kettle that was given to my family as a gift, and then there was the long row of classic chairs on the top floor of the design museum. I remember running up and down ‘chair alley’, assessing quality and comfort, style and colour. Rietveld’s ‘Red and Blue’ chair was a favourite but didn’t have much going for it in the comfort stakes, whilst Le Corbusier’s ‘Petit Comfort’ was boring but very snug.
The kitchen kettle has gone from being a beautiful ornament on my parents’ shelf, far too precious for them to actually use, to a hard working piece of kitchen apparatus; a functioning monument to kitchenalia. The Alessi kettle celebrates the ritual of tea and coffee making, it slows the pace a little, and it burns your hand when you pick it up.
‘Chair alley’ on the other hand, is no longer on show at the Design Museum. In fact it’s not just ‘chair alley’ that’s gone but the entire permanent collection.
I was invited to take part in the Design Museum’s ‘Designers in Residence’ exhibition, which showcases the work of recently graduated designers. My current work tries to make commentaries through the eyes of designed objects, and for this exhibition I was asked to address ‘the nature of a design museum’. I set about my research with the disappearance of ‘chair alley’ at the forefront of my mind.
When addressing a question like ‘What is the nature of a design museum?’, the first thing to do is ask the two questions within it; ‘What is a Museum?’ and ‘What is Design?’. Well the museum question is straightforward, it is set out for us by the Museum and Libraries Association, in short it tells us museums “…are institutions that collect, safeguard and make accessible artefacts and specimens, which they hold in trust for society”. The second question ‘What is Design?’ used to be quite straightforward, but is becoming evermore difficult to answer. It is very telling that just as people seem to be getting over asking ‘What is Art?’ we now find ourselves engaged in the question ‘What is design?’.
I decided to look at the exhibitions that were on show at the Design Museum at the time to try and understand the sprawling definitions of design and the different ways it can be exhibited to the public. Richard Rogers + Architects literally dominated the first floor, its density left me oversaturated in seconds. On the second floor was the beautiful world of Tim Walker’s photography. The added context of props and notebooks showed design curation at its finest, and left the viewer in doubt of the appropriateness of photography in a design museum. Sharing the second floor was Industrial Facility’s ‘recent projects’ exhibition, a land of utility and everyday function.
Red and Blue Rietveld chair
Petit Comfort chair by Le Corbusier
