Design Museum exterior

Design Museum

  • Museums | Art and design
  • Kensington
  • Recommended
Alex Sims
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Time Out says

What is it? 

Anywhere calling itself the Design Museum had better have an architecturally fabulous building to hold its archive, and London’s design HQ achieved just that in 2016 when it relocated from its former home on the side of the Thames near Tower Bridge to a new-and-improved building by British architect John Pawson. With its shiny Pringle-shaped parabolic roof and colossal atrium, it’s both an awe-inspiring presence and also a trove of the world's finest design.

Founded in 1989 by Sir Terence Conran, the museum shows off the most innovative design in the world, and shows how it can help the planet and humanity to thrive. It began life as part of an independent project by the V&A museum and brought garments from Issey Miyake and tech from Sony to London. It then took over a former banana warehouse in the Docklands where it staged groundbreaking exhibitions including the first UK showcases of Manolo Blahnik, Christian Louboutin and Eileen Gray. Its new digs are bigger and brighter and hold multiple gallery spaces and learning environments. 

Its permanent collection is an important record of the key designs that have shaped the modern world, telling the history of mass production and the digital revolution and spans all aspects of design including architecture, fashion, furniture, product, graphic design and transport. Its temporary exhibitions are often big-scale affairs like its Stanley Kubrick exhibition and its focus on Californian design. 

Why go? 

To understand how important designs have shaped our world. 

Don’t miss: 

As well as carrying products related to the museum's current exhibitions, the museum shop sources intriguing products from world-class designers. The emphasis is on fun, functional, gift-like kitchen and homeware, though you'll also find cool stationery, arty prints, books, toys, postcards and items you never even realised you coveted. 

When to visit:

Mon-Thu 10am-5pm, Fri-Sun 10am-6pm, peak times at weekends and school holidays. 

Ticketing info: 

Free, some exhibitions are ticketed. 

Time Out tip: 

Much of the Design Museum is a dedicated learning campus and it puts on a fascinating range of talks and workshops. Look online for the latest programming which includes hearing from professional creatives like the designers behind Tim Burton’s films, lectures from industry experts and workshops exploring how to design for a net-zero world. 

See more of London's best museums and discover our guide to the very best things to do in London.

Details

Address
224-238
High Street
Kensington
London
W8 6AG
Transport:
Tube: High Street Kensington
Price:
Free
Opening hours:
Mon-Thu 10am-5pm, Fri-Sun 10am-6pm
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What’s on

Barbie®: The Exhibition

4 out of 5 stars
Everyone’s got an opinion of Barbie. Whether you adored playing with her growing up, loathed her for her wildly unrealistic body measurements, or came to appreciate her for her cultural impact, there’s no denying the 11.5inch leggy blonde is one of the most famous toys – if not women – on the planet. Now one year after Barbie-mania had London in a chokehold, Barbara Millicent Roberts has once again tottered back into the capital’s collective conscience, this time via a Design Museum exhibition celebrating 65 years of the iconic doll.  The clothes, the handbags, the mansion, the seemingly perfect boyfriend. Barbie has it all. And so does this exhibition. It provides an extensive look into how the toy was designed, how she has evolved over the years, and how she has influenced fashion, design and wider culture. Created in partnership with Mattel, Barbie’s parent company, the show looks at the toy not just as a kicky blonde doll, but as a brand, and from a design angle it can be considered a real success.  In a dark room filled with rainbow-coloured windows we are taken on an odyssey of all of Barbie’s different head and body shapes. I died a little inside learning about the 1968 Stacey, Barbie’s British friend who had stubby eyelashes, a pasty complexion and a funny shaped head who, in a cruel joke, is lined up next to the bronzed original Malibu Barbie.  In a section dedicated entirely to Barbie pink, we discover that Barb wasn’t always obsessed with the colour, and that it wa

The World of Tim Burton

4 out of 5 stars
If you’re looking for this year’s answer to Barbenheimer, head straight for High Street Kensington. Here, the contents of Tim Burton’s drawers, attics and crypts – because he definitely has a crypt – have been arranged into a mind-altering residence at The Design Museum – just downstairs from the venue’s other blockbuster exhibition. Yes, Barbie upstairs, the Corpse Bride down below. Burton’s goth-ucopia has decamped to London just in time for Halloween, after a 10-city world tour. With advance ticket sales breaking records – 32,000 and counting –  the Californian’s adopted hometown is clearly already sold on the chance to eyeball 50 years of ceaselessly imaginative output up close.And eyeballs are everywhere here. They adorn monsters sketched, modelled and doodled by Burton over a career that stretches back to a restless, ambitious youth in the Burbank ’burbs. The opening section charts those ‘Anywhere, USA’ years, where the preternaturally gifted Burton was experimenting with stop-motion animation and pitching kids’ books to Disney. Pages from that book – The Giant Zlig – are on display, alongside a polite but encouraging rejection letter praising the young Burton’s imagination but pointing out its similarity to Dr Seuss’s.   The chance to peer at Edward Scissorhands’ actual scissorhands will be a rush for any movie lover Before transporting visitors into the heart of Burton’s Hollywood era, there’s a room dedicated to formative influences: Ray Harryhausen, Hammer films, G
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