20 stylish design museums you must visit in your lifetime
As the London Design Biennale continues, we highlight some of the world's most fascinating design museums.
1. London Design Museum
London's Design Museum reopened in 2016 in its new ￡83 million home in the former Commonwealth Institute in Kensington.
"Framed by trees on the edge of Holland Park, the interior of this 1962 modernist building with its distinctive copper hyperbolic paraboloid roof has been re-imagined by British architect John Pawson, who has transformed it into a minimalist temple of pale Dinesen Douglas fir and white marble. Now with three times the amount of space the museum, which first opened in 1989 in a former banana warehouse in Shad Thames, it can stage a wider range of exhibitions and extend its learning programme – which includes designers in residence," described Bethan Ryder.
2. Vitra Design Museum
The museum in Weil am Rhein, Germany, designed by acclaimed American architect Frank Gehry (who designed the Guggenheim Bilbao in Spain and a string of other landmark buildings around the world), features a striking exterior embodying the architect’s signature sculptural abstract style. Vitra’s permanent collection has an archive of nearly 20,000 objects, from furniture to light fixtures, highlighting design from the 1800s to the present.
3. Museum of Arts and Design (MAD)
Clad with a contemporary fa?ade of glazed terracotta tiles and fritted glass, this New York museum, whose original building dates back to 1956, is set in the heart of Columbus Circle. The museum explores innovation in craft, art and design, with a focus on the “cross-disciplinary approach” and the process by which materials are made into objects that help shape the landscape of modern day life.
4. Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian
This New York museum, dating back to 1896, is one of 19 Smithsonian Institution museums in the US. Encompassing nearly 240 years of design aesthetics, it is the only museum in the US dedicated to historical and contemporary design.
5. Dongdaemun Design Plaza
The Zaha Hadid-designed futuristic structure, featuring a curvaceous metallic fa?ade that is lit up by night, is one of Seoul’s great modern landmarks. The grounds of the multicultural complex houses a number of art and design venues including a design museum and other gallery/exhibition spaces, design shops, plus an eco-friendly park.
6. Design Museum Holon
The Design Museum Holon, located a 10-minute drive from the heart of bustling Tel Aviv, celebrates historic and contemporary Israeli design, from fashion and textiles to industrial works. The venue is noted for its bold red swirling exterior designed by Israeli-born/London-trained architect Ron Arad, whose designs feature abstract shapes. He is also designing the ToHA office complex, one of the country’s newest skyscrapers to be completed this year.
7. Bildmuseet
The contemporary art and design museum in the Swedish city of Ume?, the former residence of Stieg Larsson (author of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and others from the Millennium book/film trilogy) and European Capital of Culture for 2014, was named as one of the most beautiful university art galleries in the world following a redesign in 2012. The building itself is a thoughtful work of art, made with a fa?ade of Siberian larch wood panelling, which will fade to a silver grey colour in a few years’ time, staggered with randomly-placed windows. Its stark white interior is warmed by the natural light piercing through its windows which offer scenic views from the museum’s riverside location.
8. ArtScience Museum
Built as part of Singapore's Marina Bay Sands Resort, the world’s first art and science museum features an unusual lotus-shaped structure. While it hosts several leading travelling exhibitions from around the world, its permanent exhibition Future World showcases incredible art installations which is said to be the country’s “largest interactive digital playground” exploring for themes including “nature, town, park and space”.
9. Triennale di Milano
The design and art venue set in the Palazzo dell’Arte building of Milan explores innovation in contemporary Italian design, architecture, urban planning, media art and music. Current exhibitions include the Women in Italian Design, which celebrates “women as the new creative force behind a form of design that is less high-handed, less authoritarian, more spontaneous and more dynamic”. The museum also hosts the annual Milan Triennale showcase.
10. The Cité de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine
Housed in the Palais de Chaillot just across from the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the museum is one of the largest architectural centres in the world. It was founded in 1879 and was revonated in 2007 with the reconstuction of some of country's most recognisable monuments. The museum covers the history of French architecture, from the 12th century to the present, as well as that of the country's monuments.
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11. Stedelijk Museum Breda
The historic museum (formerly known as the Museum of the Image) in Breda, in the south of the Netherlands, is housed in one of Breda’s oldest buildings. In its former life it was a guesthouse for pilgrims in 1246 as well as a hospital in the 16th century and an old men’s house in the 17th century. With a concentration on visual culture and heritage, the museum has been merged with Breda’s Museum, which showcases visual and applied arts, photography and textiles, from this year.
12. Designmuseum Danmark
Founded in 1890 but housed in one of Copenhagen’s most historic Rococo buildings dating back to 1752 during the reign of King Frederik V, this is Denmark’s biggest museum for Danish and international design. It's said to be Scandinavia’s main hub for industrial design, decorative and applied arts.
13. A+D Museum
The Architectured and Design Museum, set in one of Los Angeles's greatest landmark buildings, covers the best in progressive art, architecture and design in the City of Angels. One of its latest upcoming exhibitions includes a look back at the life and work of Lawrence Halprin, one of America's most prolific landscape architects of the 20th century, who works include the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial in Washington DC, the Freeway Park in Seattle and the Portland Open Space Sequence in Oregon.
14. Chicago Design Museum
The skyline of Chicago, which features several buildings from the country's most prominent architects, has shaped the history of architecture in the US. The city's design museum opened its permanent home in 2014 and showcases works across a broad range of design disciplines including graphic design, interior design, architecture and urban planning. The museum is currently closed and will reopen on October 27 after its new exhibition (Keep Moving: Designing Chicago's Bicycle Culture) is installed.
15. Gallery of Australian Design
Set in Kingston, Canberra, the gallery is a collaboration between the University of Canberra, the Australian Institute of Architects, the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects and the National Museum of Australia. The gallery showcases the country's best in architecture, engineering, product and graphic design, fashion, furniture as well as environmental and virtual design concepts.
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16. Museum of African Design
Africa's first ever design museum, which opened in Johannesburg in 2013, aims to be the continent's leading hub for the "conversation, research, and response to the issues of African design – past, present, and future". One of its major previous exhibitions was Unfinished City, on show last year, which looked at "design in action", what is and makes a city, and how people see, listen to and live in Johannesburg.
17. V&A in Dundee
Opening its doors to the public next week, the spectacular new V&A is Scotland’s first design museum and the granite cliffs on Scotland’s east coast formed the inspiration for Japanese architect Kengo Kuma, whose recent projects also include the National Olympic Stadium for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. The ￡80 million complex will focus primarily on art as well as fashion, architecture and photography.
18. Museum Garage
This striking new structure, unveiled this year in the Miami Design District, houses its museum on the outside, showcasing five unique facades that serve as exhibition pieces in themselves. The colourful and intricate exteriors are the works of international designers and architectural firms based in Miami, New York, Berlin, Tokyo and Spain, respectively.
Some of the most intriguing include the Barricades (stainless steel-framed windows inspired by the orange and white traffic barriers seen around Miami), the Ant Farm (modelled on the shape of an ant colony) and the Urban Jam, a giant grid of shiny metallic gold and silver cars.
The facility also serves as a car park, holding up to 800 vehicles, as well as a mixed-use space that’s due to offer a string of retail shops.
19. China Design Museum
This new museum dedicated to contemporary and modern design is based at the Chinese Academy of Art in Hangzhou, eastern China. Designed by Portuguese architect álvaro Siza, the museum has a complex geometric structure with minimalist white interiors and a facade made of red sandstone designed to glow under the sun.
20. M+
Hong Kong's M+, the major design museum complex scheduled to launch in the West Kowloon Cultural District in 2019, opened its first gallery, the M+ Pavilion, in 2016. The striking new exhibition space perched on a hill features a mirrored exterior and will showcase the latest in art, design and architecture. The M+ museum, created by Herzog & de Meuron and headed by Michael Lynch, the man who rejuvenated London’s Southbank Centre, aims to be "a museum that looks at the world from the vantage point of Asia."
"There is increasing interest here [in Hong Kong] in identity, questions of culture and symbolic institutions. People are longing for something in Asia that can match the big museums of the world,” said Lars Nittve, executive director of M+, who was also the founding director of Tate Modern.