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Design Research (store)
Design Research (abbreviated and trademarked as D/R) was a retail store founded in 1953 by Ben Thompson in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and which introduced the concept of lifestyle store. In the 1970s under subsequent ownership, it became a chain of a dozen stores across the United States, and went bankrupt in 1979. Thompson's goal was to provide "a place where people could buy everything they needed for contemporary living", notably modern European furnishings and in particular Scandinavian design.
Without question, D/R was the most influential force in twentieth-century America in creating an awareness and appreciation for modern design in the consumer world.
D/R has continued to have an outsized reputation: in 2000, a survey of influential design stores named D/R as number one, though it had then been closed for 22 years. The store influenced later retailers like Crate & Barrel, Design Within Reach, Pottery Barn, Workbench, and Conran's.
The genius of Ben Thompson was that he wasn't a retailer, so he didn't approach retailing in a conventional way at all... Eventually we took the whole idea and translated it into a reproducible formula.
Design Research carried an eclectic selection of products, from furniture to clothing, from toys to pots and pans, at a wide range of prices, introducing the idea of a lifestyle store. It carried furnishings by such designers as Marcel Breuer, Hans Wegner, Alvar Aalto, and Joe Colombo.
Design Research was the exclusive US representative for the Finnish clothing and textiles of Marimekko from 1959 to 1976. Jacqueline Kennedy was pictured on the cover of Sports Illustrated in 1960 in a Marimekko sundress purchased at D/R.
The original Design Research store was in a 19th-century wood frame mansard house at 57 Brattle Street, in Harvard Square, Cambridge. D/R later added stores in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts; Lexington Avenue (1961) and East 57th Street (1964) in New York City; and Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco (1965).[citation needed]
Harvard University bought the original Brattle Street store and demolished it in 1969 to build the Gutman Library of its School of Education.
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Design Research (store)
Design Research (abbreviated and trademarked as D/R) was a retail store founded in 1953 by Ben Thompson in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and which introduced the concept of lifestyle store. In the 1970s under subsequent ownership, it became a chain of a dozen stores across the United States, and went bankrupt in 1979. Thompson's goal was to provide "a place where people could buy everything they needed for contemporary living", notably modern European furnishings and in particular Scandinavian design.
Without question, D/R was the most influential force in twentieth-century America in creating an awareness and appreciation for modern design in the consumer world.
D/R has continued to have an outsized reputation: in 2000, a survey of influential design stores named D/R as number one, though it had then been closed for 22 years. The store influenced later retailers like Crate & Barrel, Design Within Reach, Pottery Barn, Workbench, and Conran's.
The genius of Ben Thompson was that he wasn't a retailer, so he didn't approach retailing in a conventional way at all... Eventually we took the whole idea and translated it into a reproducible formula.
Design Research carried an eclectic selection of products, from furniture to clothing, from toys to pots and pans, at a wide range of prices, introducing the idea of a lifestyle store. It carried furnishings by such designers as Marcel Breuer, Hans Wegner, Alvar Aalto, and Joe Colombo.
Design Research was the exclusive US representative for the Finnish clothing and textiles of Marimekko from 1959 to 1976. Jacqueline Kennedy was pictured on the cover of Sports Illustrated in 1960 in a Marimekko sundress purchased at D/R.
The original Design Research store was in a 19th-century wood frame mansard house at 57 Brattle Street, in Harvard Square, Cambridge. D/R later added stores in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts; Lexington Avenue (1961) and East 57th Street (1964) in New York City; and Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco (1965).[citation needed]
Harvard University bought the original Brattle Street store and demolished it in 1969 to build the Gutman Library of its School of Education.