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Design Museum

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2040122

Design Museum

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Design Museum

The Design Museum in Kensington, London, England, exhibits product, industrial, graphic, fashion, and architectural design. In 2018, the museum won the European Museum of the Year Award. The museum operates as a registered charity, and all funds generated by ticket sales aid the museum in curating new exhibitions.

The museum was founded in 1989 by Sir Terence Conran, with Stephen Bayley as inaugural CEO, after the two men had collaboratively created the highly successful exhibition space known as The Boilerhouse at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A).

The museum was originally housed in a former 1940s banana warehouse on the south bank of the River Thames in the Shad Thames area of London. The conversion of this warehouse altered it beyond recognition, to resemble a building in the International Modernist style of the 1930s. This was funded by many companies, designers and benefactors. The museum was principally designed by the Conran group, with exhibitions over two floors, and a "Design Museum Tank" exhibition space out by the waterfront. A large scale sculpture titled The Head of Invention by Sir Eduardo Paolozzi was installed in the area between the museum and the Thames.

In June 2011, Sir Terence Conran donated £17.5 million to enable the museum to move in 2016 from the warehouse to a larger site which formerly housed the Commonwealth Institute in west London. This landmark from the 1960s, a Grade II* listed building, designed by Robert Matthew/Sir Robert Matthew, Johnson-Marshall and Partners architects that had stood vacant for over a decade, was developed by a design team led by John Pawson. Fit-out of the Design Museum's new home was carried out by Willmott Dixon Interiors.

The Design Museum opened in its Kensington location on 24 November 2016. The move gave the museum three times more space than in its previous location at Shad Thames, with the new Swarovski Foundation Centre for Learning, 202-seat Bakala Auditorium and a dedicated gallery to display its permanent collection, accessible free of charge. The new building was the subject of a profile on the Sky Arts programme The Art of Architecture in 2019.

The move brought the museum into Kensington's cultural quarter, joining the Royal College of Art, V&A, Science Museum, Natural History Museum and Serpentine Gallery.

Deyan Sudjic succeeded Alice Rawsthorn as director of the Design Museum in 2006. In 2016, Alice Black was appointed co-director. In 2019, Tim Marlow was appointed as director and chief executive.

The top-floor space under the museum roof houses a permanent display, Designer Maker User, with key objects from the museum's collection. A restaurant, members' lounge, residency studio and an events and gallery space are also located on the top floor.

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