In the build up to the 2022 World Cup, the Design Museum presents the first major exhibition on the design of the world’s most popular sport, football. This exhibition will reveal how human creativity has pushed the game to its technical and emotional limits
In spring 2022, step into a sensory playground with ‘Weird Sensation Feels Good’ as the Design Museum explores the internet sensation that is ASMR
Looking ahead to autumn, discover how Surrealism has influenced design for the past 100 years, with Objects of Desire: Surrealism and Design.
Football: Designing the Beautiful Game
Dates: 8 April 2022 – 29 August 2022
Fanatic supporter or part-time punter, discover the incredible design stories behind the beautiful game.
It is estimated that more than half the population of the planet – some 3.5 billion people – watched part of the FIFA World Cup in 2018. Football is unquestionably the world’s most popular sport, with a dedicated fan base and truly international reach, its diversity and passion touching the lives of people from all walks of life.
This exhibition will unpick how design has pushed the game to its technical and emotional limits while exploring the incredible cultural plurality at its heart. From the master-planning of the world’s most significant football stadiums to the innovative materials used in today’s boots, the graphic design of team badges and the grassroots initiatives pushing back against the sport’s commercialisation. Glimpse a rare insight into the designers and creative processes that have made football what it is today.
The exhibition will be produced in partnership with the National Football Museum in Manchester.
Tim Marlow, Chief Executive and Director said: “Football is the great global game, endlessly discussed and debated but never yet scrutinised extensively through the lens of design. So this exhibition is an exciting and important one for the museum but also, I hope, for the game itself. Equally important is the chance to engage with new audiences, to reach out to people who have never felt that museums were for them.”
Tim Marlow, Chief Executive and Director said: “Football is the great global game, endlessly discussed and debated but never yet scrutinised extensively through the lens of design. So this exhibition is an exciting and important one for the museum but also, I hope, for the game itself. Equally important is the chance to engage with new audiences, to reach out to people who have never felt that museums were for them.”
Weird Sensation Feels Good
Dates: Opens Friday 13 May 2022
Have you ever heard a sound that has brought you a sense of calm? Or even made your skin tingle?
Millions around the world are part of an online community who experience ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response): a physical sensation of euphoria or deep calm, sometimes a tingling in the body, triggered through sound, touch, and movement.
This is the first exhibition of its kind to lift the world of ASMR out from your screen and into physical space. Step into an acoustically tuned environment and understand how people are creating sensory responses using new and existing tools and materials.
Explore the emerging field of creativity that has grown up around this feeling and the work of designers and content creators who try to trigger it in their viewers.
The exhibition is presented in collaboration Tim Marlow, Chief Executive and Director said:“Football is the great global game, endlessly discussed and debated but never yet scrutinised extensively through the lens of design. So this exhibition is an exciting and important one for the museum but also, I hope, for the game itself. Equally important is the chance to engage with new audiences, to reach out to people who have never felt that museums were for them.”
Objects of Desire: Surrealism and Design 1924 – Today
A Vitra Design Museum Exhibition
Dates: Opens Friday 14 October 2022
One of the most influential art movements of the twentieth century, Surrealism combined and reinvented everyday objects to create dreamlike imagery. The results include iconic works of art such as Marcel Duchamp’s Bicycle Wheel (1913) and Salvador Dalí’s Lobster Telephone (1936).
This is the first exhibition to examine the previously unexplored influence that Surrealism has had on design over the past 100 years, from furniture and interiors to graphic design, fashion and photography. It brings together classic works of art and design as well contemporary responses from around the globe.
The exhibition will include works by Gae Aulenti, BLESS, Achille Castiglioni, Giorgio de Chirico, Le Corbusier, Salvador Dalí, Dunne & Raby, Max Ernst, Ray Eames, Front, Shiro Kuramata, Carlo Mollino, Isamu Noguchi, Man Ray and many others.
Supported by: Art Mentor Foundation Lucerne
Irma Boom
November 2022 – Spring 2023
Irma Boom is one of the greatest and most prolific book designers working today. With more than 380 books to her name, the Dutch designer is renowned for the way she challenges the format to make each volume a unique experience. This retrospective exhibition gets inside her craft, revealing not just her creative process but the power of the book itself. With this exhibition, Boom has set herself the challenge of finding novel ways to tell the story of her practice. It features her collaborations with Rem Koolhaas, Sheila Hicks, Chanel and many others, and brings to light the work of a master designer, even if she likes to call herself simply a “book maker”.
Free displays at the Design Museum
The Conran Effect
October 2021 – February 2022
Through a series of parallel careers, Sir Terence Conran had a greater impact than any other designer of his era, revolutionising everyday life in contemporary Britain. He changed the way we eat, shop, and live today. Coinciding with what would have been Conran’s 90th birthday, the Design Museum celebrates the memory of its founder with this look back at his extraordinary achievements. It features examples of his early furniture designs, his establishment of Habitat and his influential restaurants, and in doing so, it reminds us of Conran’s remarkable contribution to modern life in Britain. The exhibition will be accompanied by a new book on Terence Conran by Deyan Sudjic.
Yinka Ilori
Summer 2022
London-based artist/designer Yinka Ilori enlivens the public realm with installations and murals in a playful combination of colour and pattern. This display will bring to the museum his distinctive aesthetic, inspired by the African fabrics of his childhood and capturing the colourful geometric patterns that feature in Nigerian design, with a nod to British postmodernism.
Bethany Williams
Spring 2022
From garments made from recycled book waste to collaborations with community projects, this London-based designer is building a practice that seeks to avoid the usual contradictions of fashion. Her work tackles social and environmental issues, and this display also includes her collaboration as part of the Emergency Designer Network to create PPE during the pandemic.
Happy Birthday Design Museum!
An AR celebration of the museum’s iconic building with Snap
November 2021
In 2021, the Design Museum is partnering with Snapchat with the ambition of re-imagining what the museum experience could be, focusing on Augmented Reality. In celebration of its fifth anniversary in the building, the Design Museum is launching an annual Augmented Reality experience, that reimagines the former Commonwealth Institute. Each year, the Design Museum and Snapchat will partner with an individual designer, architect or technologist to create an AR installation that allows people to experience and share the Design Museum in its new virtual form.
In partnership with Snap.
Learning and Research at the Design Museum
Design Ventura
September 2021 – April 2022
Design Ventura is the Design Museum’s free to participate, award-winning design and enterprise programme for schools. Supported by Deutsche Bank as part its global CSR youth engagement programme Born to Be, the project challenges students aged 13-16 to tackle a live brief set by a leading designer to design a new, sustainable/sustainably considered product for the Design Museum Shop. This year’s winner will be announced in April 2022. The top ten shortlisted student designs will pitch for the top spot and all will be exhibited at the Design Museum in Spring 2022.
Design Researchers In Residence
Deadline for 2021/22 applications Sunday 19 September
Exhibition opens June 2022
Building on more than a decade of its Designers in Residence programme, the Design Museum is launching a new residency programme with the Arts and Humanities Research Council: Design Researchers In Residence. The four selected Design Researchers in Residence, working on this year’s theme of Restore, will be hosted by the museum, where they will share their future-focused research with audiences and contribute to the debate around the contribution design can make to tackling waste and net zero.
Design Researchers in Residence is delivered in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council and is supported by The Idlewild Trust.
Entrepreneurs Hub
Deadline for 2021 applications: 13 September 2021
As part of its commitment to widening access for design innovation and emerging talent, this autumn, the Design Museum is launching the Entrepreneurs Hub, an 8-week pilot programme for accelerating the growth of 15 design-led startups. The programme will offer participants entrepreneurial skills training, mentoring and exposure to industry leaders, enabling them to develop design concepts into viable, sustainable businesses. Supported by Marcho Partners Foundation and a coalition of technology entrepreneurs and investors, the Hub will have accessibility, inclusion and diversity at its core, contribute to driving equality of opportunity in the sector and address structural barriers to empower the next generation of design business leaders.
Ralph Saltzman Prize
February 2022
Created in honour of Ralph Saltzman, the Co-Founder and President of DesignTex, the Ralph Saltzman Prize is a new initiative and reflects the Design Museum’s overarching commitment to champion new talent and nurture the development of a vibrant design sector. Each year, a panel of design luminaries will handpick a number of the brightest emerging designers currently making waves in the field of product design. The winner, selected for their innovative approach to contemporary themes, will receive a £5,000 honorarium and will be invited to display their work in the Design Museum’s atrium space.
The Ralph Saltzman Prize is supported by the Saltzman Family Foundation.
Emerging Designer Access Fund
As part of the Design Museum’s commitment to increasing access to the museum’s content it has created the Emerging Designer Access Fund. The Emerging Designers Access Fund gives free access to the museum’s programme of exhibitions and events to anyone who is an emerging designer. The aim is to ensure there are no financial – or other – barriers to entry, and to support the next generation of talent. The fund was set up in April 2021 with seed funding from the sale of products in the Bombay Sapphire Supermarket. Details of how to join the scheme can be found on the Design Museum Website.
Ardagh Young Creatives
The Design Museum is committed to supporting the next generation of designers. In recognition of the challenge facing the design industries to become more representative and to support invaluable skills, talent and lived experience, the Design Museum launched the Ardagh Young Creatives in 2021. Year 1 culminated with a live build for a gathering space in front of the museum led by Resolve Collective. Year 2 will kick off in January 2022.
Developed in partnership with Ardagh Group, the programme takes young people aged 14-16 from under-represented groups on a year-long creative journey. It aims to build confident curiosity, develop design skills and raise aspirations. Centred on real life design briefs and collaboration with designers and industry professionals, the programme becomes a gateway into a career in design.
The Ardagh Young Creatives is supported by Ardagh Group.
Community Garden
Spring 2022
In 2022, the Design Museum and the Design Age Institute will launch the Growing Together garden project, a new community programme that seeks to build sustained relationships with local community groups. The project seeks to establish an age-friendly intergenerational community space at the Design Museum through a long-term participatory project. The programme will launch during the Spring 2022 and will be accompanied by a public events programme later in the year.
Design Age is a partnership between the Design Age Institute* and the Design Museum.
Public Programme in Collaboration with Project Etopia, supported by the Reuben Foundation
November 2021 and January 2022
The Design Museum is working in collaboration with Project Etopia, supported by the Reuben Foundation, to develop a number of talks as part of the Waste Age public programme. These talks will demonstrate the ways in which the built environment can address some of the world’s most pressing environmental challenges, as well as inspire meaningful change within the design industry and among the Museum’s audiences.
Project Etopia are a partnership of six innovative low carbon businesses. Together, they seek long-term solutions for today’s global housing, social and environmental crises.
DESIGN AGE
Spring 2022
DESIGN AGE is an interactive exhibit, living design lab and pop-up research hub that invites members of the public to discover the ways innovation and design are transforming the way we live, work, play as we grow older with agency and joy. From mobility devices that offer safety and style to age-friendly banking, homes that can adapt to our changing needs to challenging ageist stereotypes and attitudes, design has the potential to radically reimagine how we can live rewarding and joyful lives as we get older. Curated by the Design Age Institute, DESIGN AGE explores the future of ageing through cutting-edge research into the needs, interests and aspirations of the UK’s ageing population.
The Design Museum is the world’s leading museum devoted to contemporary architecture and design. Its work encompasses all elements of design, including fashion, product and graphic design. Since it opened its doors in 1989 the museum has displayed everything from an AK-47 to high heels designed by Christian Louboutin. It has staged over 100 exhibitions, welcomed over seven million visitors and showcased the work of some of the world’s most celebrated designers and architects including Paul Smith, Zaha Hadid, Jonathan Ive, Frank Gehry, Eileen Gray and Dieter Rams. On 24 November 2016, The Design Museum relocated to Kensington, west London. John Pawson has converted the interior of a 1960s modernist building to create a new home for the Design Museum giving it three times more space in which to show a wider range of exhibitions and significantly extend its learning programme.
In April 2021, the Design Museum was awarded GBP 5 million through the Government’s Culture Recovery Fund: Repayable Finance programme.
In October 2020, the Design Museum was awarded GBP 2968634 by Arts Council England from the Culture Recovery Fund announced by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.
In July 2020, the Design Museum was awarded nearly GBP 1 million National Lottery funding through the Arts Council’s Emergency Response Fund.
The Design Age Institute is part of the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design at the Royal College of Art and was established in 2020 to support the UK Government’s Grand Challenge on an Ageing Society. It is funded by Research England. The Institute’s mission is to amplify the voice of people as they age and create a thriving economy for aspirational products and services that support healthy ageing.