★★★★★ 5.0
Discover
the Design Museum
The year is 1962, and workers are installing the most BONKERS roof in London - a twisty copper shell that looks like a giant's pretzel! This wild blue building on Kensington High Street once displayed treasures from every corner of the old British Empire, but sat empty as a ghost house for fourteen whole years. Then in 2016, Sir Terence Conran spent 17 and a half MILLION pounds to wake it up as the Design Museum! That crazy pretzel roof is still there, now protecting nearly a thousand amazing objects inside - from the London Olympics torch to your iPhone. Can you spot that shimmering copper twisting above you?
Did You Know?
- Founded by Habitat’s Terence Conran, the Design Museum began life in 1982 as the Boilerhouse Project—a radical, makeshift gallery in the basement of the V&A, where it challenged traditional museum norms by showcasing product and industrial design, including early exhibitions on brands like Sony and Coca-Cola, and designers such as Issey Miyake and the Memphis collective, helping to bring modern design into mainstream British culture.
- The museum’s original Shad Thames home was a converted 1940s banana-ripening warehouse, transformed into a minimalist ‘Bauhaus on Thames’ with white walls, marble floors, and glass brick walls—a deliberate architectural statement against the surrounding Victorian buildings, and a symbol of the museum’s commitment to functional, modernist design.
- The Design Museum gave Zaha Hadid her first solo show in Britain in 2007, reshaping its galleries to display her monumental architectural work, including early sketches, models, and even her product designs—a landmark event that highlighted the museum’s role in championing groundbreaking designers and its ongoing influence in the global design community.