Designs of the Year 2017 at the Design Museum review ****

Beazley Designs of the Year 2017

The Design Museum, 8th November 2017

If you have any interest in design you are probably on to this but, if not, you should be. This is the tenth year of the exhibition, now held in the basement of the Design Museum’s plush new Holland Park home. I have been in the previous three years and, as before, there is plenty to fascinate and wow the imagination of the layman.

The exhibition comprises 62 projects divided into six categories: architecture, digital, fashion, graphics, product and transport. These are contained within a grotto like structure made up of some sort of curious paper mache like material. Very playful. There’s even some Lego to keep the kids occupied; one of the products is some natty “sticky strips” that might allow your Lego creations to defy gravity. I divined a more interventionist vibe than in prior years with a very definite focus on recycled materials and on minimising ecological impact. Sexy brand stuff was thin on the ground. The designers on show plainly what to make good things happen. Hats off to them.

Now I have to confess that I find the architecture, product and transport categories more interesting than the digital, fashion and graphics categories but there is literally nothing here that doesn’t get the brain cells working in some way. The Smithsonian National Museum of African_American History and Culture in Washington, Zaha Hadid’s last building, at the Antwerp Port Authority (I’ve seen it – it’s bloody awesome) and the  controversial Benetton store in the Fondaco dei Tedeschi in Venice, stood out in the architecture section. My favourite though was the Croft Lodge Studio fashioned out of a derelict C18 cottage. I want one. In transport the standout surely was the Scewo mobility chair which can climb stairs. I also fell for the self-driving, electric tram system from China which is guided by a double-dashed strip on the street! As for products I was drawn to the search and rescue drone designed to help migrants in the Mediterranean, the Gita robot personal helper (though it could get very annoying) and, especially, the Sufferhead Original Stout beer concept, a powerful idea.

Anyhow I am sure you will find something to draw you in. Now it is a pretty small space, so this won’t take up too much of your time, maybe an hour or so. Which means, if you aren’t to feel a little bit miffed by the 13 quid admission, (get an Art Fund Card to halve the price – all you cultural flaneurs should invest in one), you need to leave time to cruise the permanent exhibits in the DM. Up on the top floor is a compact overview of design history, piled up with some absolute classic products, which should equally please the nostalgic old and digital young. There is little that will surprise but much that will delight.

Best of all is the beautiful interior of the DM space carved out of the old Commonwealth Institute which has rescued, and restored, its truly stunning, though very problematic, hyperbolic, paraboloid (!) copper roof. The original building, completed in 1962, designed by Robert Matthew Johnson-Marshall & Partners, is the finest modernist building in London IMHO, ahead of the Royal Festival Hall. After the CI itself was canned there was a real chance the building might be toast as well but fortunately pragmatism reigned, and architect John Pawson was finally wheeled in to oversee the salvation of the interior. Some whinged about the price to be paid to make this all happen, namely the development of luxury flats in the square in front of the new DM. Ignore them. These too are stunners, an understated design from Dutch wunderkind-architect Rem Koolhass’s OMA.

So pop on your smartest black designer togs and channel your inner Arne Jacobsen, Dieter Rams or Jonathan Ive.