USING DISCOVER DESIGN
DISCOVER DESIGN will aid successful planning, delivery and follow up of a school or group visit to the Design Museum. It has been developed to support students in learning how to look at design with a critical and creative approach, benefiting their own design practice whilst helping them become more discerning consumers. The Notes for Teachers and Tutors offer an overview of the site and includes suggestions for how you might use it, for example digitally projected to initiate discussion at the start of a design project. Group Bookings provides everything you need to know when planning and booking a visit.
NOTES FOR TEACHERS AND TUTORS
This document provides an introduction to Discover Design and how it integrates with the education program at the Design Museum.
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If you are bringing a group to the Design Museum please use the bookings form to let us know when you'd like to visit.
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The Design Museum
Brainchild of Terence ConranArchitect: Conran Partners
Date of design: 1989
The Design Museum was established as a showcase for excellence in design, with a remit to examine both design and its contexts. Founder Terence Conran's intention was to put modern design at the heart of contemporary culture, endorsing its cultural value and the importance of creativity found in all forms of design, both economically and as a way of understanding a rapidly changing society.
The Design Museum is housed in a former banana warehouse located on the riverside at Shad Thames in South East London. The striking redevelopment by Conran Partner Architects remodelled a drab functional building into a Modernist Bauhaus-style flexible space with glorious views across the River Thames. The flat roof, box-like, stacked shape and white exterior of the building signal its modernity and make it stand out from its neighbours.
Rather than starting from scratch, Conran & Partners Architects dramatically remodelled a banana warehouse building into a modernist architectural showcase for design, thereby keeping costs down and breathing new cultural life into the locale. The building's primary materials are brick, concrete and glass, while for additional visual interest the building sits on a granite plinth.
As the home for exhibitions that include explorations of design principles, the Design Museum building has to introduce the idea of looking at our surroundings differently. Conran's modernist shell stands out amongst the warehouses on either side of it because it is so different. The Design Museum Tank, on the riverfront, gives passers by a taster of what they might find inside.
The Design Museum was built to bring the world of 20th and 21st century design to the public's attention through exhibitions, education and public programmes. It showcases examples of great design and aims to engage visitors in a dialogue about the role of design and its impact on our lives today.