The Design Museum - London, UK

22nd October 2013 - £11.85 (joined by Amanda Leat and Farhad Agzamov)

Cool Joe

By creepy old uncle Thames, in Tower Bridge's meagre winter shadow, sits the old banana factory that now houses London's glittering Design Museum. I'll say this, right off the bat: I don't really care for this kind of thing. Perhaps my ambivalence renders an opinion of said institution obsolete, but I believe great museums should have the power to convert the heathen (like the National Railway Museum).

Our entry was inauspicious due to the surprisingly hefty queue for the relatively small space, perhaps adding credence to the museum's proposed move in 2014 to Kensington (an area, I'm sure you'll agree, in desperate need of a museum or two). The entrance was a little steep, granted, but they receive no government subsidies, are relatively transparent as far as their finances go and they do a lot for the world of design so I'll let it slide. For now. 

Ground Floor - Shop/Cafe/Ticket Office

True to form, the Design Museum's shop is as expensive as it is good. They had all sorts of trinkets that were fun to show each other before checking the price tag, puffing out your cheeks and putting back said item carefully. Apparently, their toilets are a highlight, a quality only the Design Museum could successfully pull off. They were fine but I'd been spoilt by the John Soane Museum's effort. 

The sign still annoys me

First Floor - The Future was/is Here Exhibition

The name of the exhibition was written above the entrance in neon tube lighting with the "was" flickering off to reveal an "is" (see above). In the immortal words of Alan Partridge it was "only 3% as clever as it thinks it is". The proceedings started with a little backstory regarding the history of design and it was a rather pleasant education to learn about the invention of the lathe and the spinning jenny. However, I do have one burning issue to address: the Luddites weren't just work-shy Northern technophobes. They were normal people being shat on by the dehumanising forces of rampant technological progress and a bull market going nuclear. They took it out on the machines as what else could they do? Just because we use the word today to mean anyone who can't hack into the pentagon mainframe doesn't mean they're some kind of anathema to progress. Ok!? 

I don't know what this is

Allow me take off my righteous indignation hat and tell you about this museum: it's fine. If I did stars, this would be the most three star review it would be possible to give. The exhibition had a reasonably wide scope, if not a touch shallow. As it was about the future there was a little more projection than I care for. My main problem with that was the paucity of the forecasting on display: this is the future, you can talk about silver space suits, hover boards and gangs of lawless cyberpunks, instead what we got was a mite more bromidic. 

Biodegradable shoes,
just next to a chocolate teapot.

They claimed to have an unbreakable toaster that (despite being utterly, UTTERLY useless) presented more of a challenge than anything else. Give me fifteen minutes on my own with a cricket bat and we'll see what you call indestructible. Another was a biodegradable trainer. Why? Do Reebok Pumps make up a vast proportion of landfill? Are turtles choking on Adidas Predators they've mistaken for jellyfish? Will they start to compost if you stand in dog shit? I see the future's paved with pertinent questions. They also had a table featuring books about design for people to sit at and read. Seriously. People paid £11.85 to sit and read a book, which to me seems insane but it was packed. I didn't get it. 

3D printing played a large part of the exhibition and, to be fair, it is the future. One problem I have with 3D printing is the name. Human beings have mapped the human genome, composed Mozart's requiem and freed India from British rule and the only name for such a miraculous entry to the annals from such an imaginative ape is 3D fucking printing? Sort it out, humans.

By the end, the exhibition seemed like a made.com showroom with a couple of their ugly couches on display that can be designed and shaped to the whims of the customer. Isn't designing couches your job made.com? There was also a computer where you could visit the Open Desks range. Internet shopping in a museum... seriously?

The real problem here is that I didn't care before the exhibition and I didn't care during or after. There are people I know who'd be interested in this kind of thing, but they aren't called Joseph McLaughlin Francis Deeney.

This is meant to be me.
They didn't have the option to
make your eyes look like
piss-holes in the snow.

Second Floor - Permanent Exhibition Space

Ascending the stairs, it's immediately noticeable that the museum's permanent displays are more focused and, ergo, its more interesting area. Half was divided into current advanced design, the other, design classics. One piece of modern technology was a device that scrambled commercials and showed you programmes based on what you like. They make those? Forget 3D printing, the future is here! 

There was a display showing things made for people with dementia that was heartbreaking featuring little tokens on a table, made for people in various stages of the condition. One was a tape made for a chap who always complained that whatever song was playing wasn't as good as You'll Never Walk Alone. The designer (/artist?) put the song to tape to see if he'd react in the same way but when he heard it, he was silent and thoughtful. 

Excuse me, dear reader, I think I've got something in my eye.

The Sinclair C5 never caught on...
No one knows why.

The permanent reliquary was pretty good and boasted some quirky design classics like the chairs you suffered at school, a grotesque early naughties' iMac, quirky lampshades, a Sinclair C5, bizarre ladies' fashion and more chairs (the Design Museum demonstrates the many ways to sit). The sections at the museum's rear featured the design principles of Scott's K series of telephone boxes and the trusty British road sign. Here's where the museum became more a scholar than a first year fashion student. 

I don't know what was running through BT's mind when they got rid of so many of the red telephone boxes but fie and a pox on them, they're ace. An interesting display was the typical British traffic light, an item we see every day, and yet it was refreshing to judge such a quotidian item on its design qualities.

They took out the call girl cards

On the wall opposite was shown the design of the euro banknotes which struck me as a touch asinine as, completely apolitically, the euro's a bloody horrible currency. Featureless bridges and arches? Brilliant. 

Overview

In writing this review, it's proving hard to say anything black or white about the Design Museum, and I'm finding myself swimming in an infinite sea of grey (which, as we know, is a tricky colour in the world of design). It seems like a limbo between the sublime (The British Museum) and the ridiculous (The Clink), and an entrance just shy of £12 stings a little for two hours in purgatory. Perhaps with a better exhibition my opinion would've been more favourable, but as it stands, I've never really spent much time thinking about this kind of design and, since visiting this museum, I won't be spending much more. 

"Mum, whatever you do,
DON'T TURN LEFT!"

If this kind of thing lights your candle, queue up with the others. It seems like there's a lot of you. Weird.