Move with us: Clerkenwell Design Week

The Design Museum will be hosting two discussions at this year’s Clerkenwell Design Week.

How to design a design museum

Wednesday 25 May, 18:30 - 20:00
Part of Clerkenwell Design Week
At Vitra Showroom, 30 Clerkenwell Rd, London EC1M 5PG

As the Design Museum prepares to move to its new home in Kensington in November this year, join the museum's first Director, Stephen Bayley, and its current Director, Deyan Sudjic, as they discuss the ambitions and realities of creating a new museum for design. From the 1980s to the 2010s - what has changed, what remains the same, and where will design go next?

this talk is now sold out

Reimagining a design icon: The transformation of The Commonwealth Institute into the new Design Museum

Thursday 26 May, 15.30 – 16.30
Part of Clerkenwell Design Week
The Goldsmiths’ Centre

The Design Museum’s new home – the former Commonwealth Institute in Kensington is a unique 1960s Grade II* listed building which has stood vacant for over a decade. It is being transformed by a design team led by John Pawson. Join Senior Architect Chris Masson, the Design Museum Deputy Director Alice Black and Roger Cunliffe, who ran the original The Commonwealth Institute design team, as they reflect on this once-in-a-lifetime design project.

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more about the speakers

Stephen Bayley

Stephen Bayley is an author, critic, columnist, consultant, broadcaster, debater and curator. His best-selling books and award-winning journalism have, over the past thirty years, changed the way the world thinks about design. With Terence Conran he created the influential Boilerhouse Project in the Victoria & Albert Museum. This became London’s most successful exhibition space during the eighties and evolved into the influential Design Museum which Mrs Thatcher opened in 1989.

Alice Black, Deputy Director, The Design Museum

Having graduated from ESSEC Business School in France, Alice began her career in banking in New York. Alice’s experience in the UK spans work in the public and private sector, in large, multi-site national museums as well as independent museums. Formerly Head of Strategy and Planning at the Imperial War Museum and Curator of the Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms, Alice has an in-depth knowledge of museums’ strategic and operational issues. In September 2007, Alice was appointed Deputy Director of the Design Museum, with a brief to develop audiences and increase self-generated income. This brief was later expanded to include exhibitions programming. Alice is responsible for the museum's relocation project to the former Commonwealth Institute building in Kensington High Street, to create the leading museum of contemporary design and architecture. The museum’s new home will reopen in late 2016.

Chris Masson, Senior Architect, John Pawson

Chris Masson has worked for John Pawson for 17 years. In that time he has worked on a wide range of projects including the Cathay Pacific Lounge, Chek Lap Kok, Hong Kong, the Sackler Crossing, Royal Botanical Gardens Kew and the St Edwards School Cricket Pavilion, Oxford. He is currently the senior architect working on the new Design Museum project.

Roger Cunliffe, ran the original design team and designed the roof for The Commonwealth Institute building

After The Commonwealth Institute, Roger Cunliffe spent three years working in Chicago. Thereafter he was Leonard Manasseh’s office manager, before returning to RMJM to run the planning team for the Central Lancashire New Town. A stint as the Architectural Association’s Director & Secretary was followed by a career as a project manager, with projects from Sudan to Siberia. Now retired, he is closely associated with the creative courses at Suffolk’s new university.

Deyan Sudjic, Director, The Design Museum

Deyan Sudjic is Director of the Design Museum. Before joining the museum in 2006, Deyan was Dean of the Faculty of Art, Architecture and Design at Kingston University, visiting professor at the Royal College of Art and the Academy of Applied Art in Vienna and the Observer newspaper’s design and architecture writer. Deyan has written many books on design and architecture, including The Edifice Complex (Penguin, 2006), The Language of Things (Penguin, 2008) and Ettore Sottsass, the Poetry of Things (Phaidon, 2015).

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