Museum of Design Zürich

The Museum of Design Zurich (German: Museum für Gestaltung Zürich) is a museum for design, visual communication, architecture and handicraft. It is located in "Zurich's" Kreis 5, close to the main railway station.

In a building that once housed the School of Arts and Crafts the museum runs a large exhibition hall and the gallery, the foyer, the cafeteria and the shop as well as the vestibule to the lecture hall. The museum's other exhibition locations are the Museum Bellerive, which occupies a former villa on the shores of Lake Zurich, and the Plakatraum (poster room). The museum's four extensive collections (Poster Collection, Graphics Collection, Design Collection and Applied Art Collection) are of international importance and are open to the public on request.

Exhibitions, both monographic and devoted to specific themes, are organized each year in the hall and in the gallery of the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich, in the Museum Bellerive and in the Plakatraum. For the most part these exhibitions focus on the areas of industrial and product design, applied arts, fashion, textiles and jewelry, graphic arts, typography, poster and book design, new media and film as well as architecture, interior design, scenography and public space.

History, architecture, locations

The Museum of Design Zürich developed out of the Museum of Arts and Crafts, which was founded in 1875. In 1933 the museum and the School of Arts and Crafts, which had been in existence since 1878 and today is known as the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK), moved into the building designed by Adolf Steger and Karl Egender that is today a landmark building.

The aesthetic and functional quality of this building complex is one of the most striking examples of the Modern Architecture movement in Switzerland. Since 1968 the Museum of Design Zürich has also run the Museum Bellerive, which is located in a former villa dating from 1931 and houses the Applied Art Collection. The other collections are opposite the main building on Limmatstrasse (Poster Collection), and in a commercial building on Förrlibuckstrasse (Design Collection and Graphics Collection).

The Museum of Design Zürich is part of the Department of Cultural Analysis of the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK).

Exhibitions

Most of the exhibitions shown in the Museum of Design Zürich are produced by the museum itself and are developed partly in dialogue with the museum collections or through research projects. Exhibitions taken over from other institutions make up only a small part of the exhibition program.

The Museum of Design Zürich shows between five and seven temporary exhibitions annually in the hall and the gallery of the main building, small interventions within the museum, three temporary exhibitions in the Museum Bellerive as well as two in the Plakatraum.

In the exhibitions, which are mostly interdisciplinary in character, historical phenomena, contemporary tendencies and innovative approaches are presented on a sound scholarly basis and in a visual and emotionally interesting way, allowing them to appeal to both a broad general public and people with specialized interests and knowledge.

Scenography and visual communication

In translating the themes and concepts of the visual communication into exhibitions the Museum of Design Zürich works from project to project with different teams of established young scenographers, architects and visual designers.

This approach leads repeatedly to new exhibition and poster designs that satisfy the demands of experimental curiosity while maintaining a high level of design quality and that have regularly received design awards.

Program accompanying the exhibition

Exhibitions in the Museum of Design Zürich are accompanied by a program of tours, symposia, panel discussions, talks with artists, film and theatre performances and concerts. A specifically tailored educational program is devised for each exhibition held in the museum.

Collections

The four collections of the Museum of Design Zürich emerged out of a collection of examples built up by the Museum of Arts and Crafts for teaching purposes. Today, they are of international importance. Objects from the collection are to be found in international research projects and exhibitions, while within the Zurich University of the Arts they are used for studying design solutions, materials, techniques and styles. Part of the collection is accessible online.

Poster Collection

The Poster Collection is among the most comprehensive and important archives of its kind in the world. It comprises 330 000 posters, of which 120 000 have been photographed and indexed, and documents the Swiss and international history of the poster from its beginnings in the mid-19th century down to the present-day.

The collection includes political, cultural and commercial posters. For reasons explicable in terms of design history the geographical focal points are Switzerland, Europe, Japan, Cuba, the former Soviet Union and the USA.

Design Collection

The Design Collection includes 10 000 products and 20 000 examples of packaging produced by famous designers or representative of anonymous everyday design. Serially manufactured products from the 20th century and the present are collected, with the emphasis being placed on Swiss design.

Through its permanent loans from the field of product design (an area that has been subsidized by the Swiss Federal Office of Culture since 1989) the Swiss Confederation makes available objects that pertain to the current design discourse.

Parallel to the collection of objects an archive for Swiss Design is being built up that benefits and assists scholarly research in the field. The archive contains concepts, project studies, design drawings, user guides, patent specifications, advertising material, source texts as well as parts of the archives of design studios, companies and associations.

Graphics Collection

The Graphics Collection has existed since the museum was founded. It documents the aesthetic and cultural transformation of graphics in everyday life from Gutenberg to the present. The diversity of works and its current focus on European graphic design is unique in Switzerland. Originally intended as an international collection of examples, the Graphics Collection includes almost all graphic disciplines that were of importance for teaching at the former School of Arts and Crafts. The core was initially formed by drawings, prints and illustrated books as well as textbook from the 15th to the 20th century, to these were later added press work, East Asian works, artists books, photographs and commercial art.

Today collecting concentrates on advertising and information graphics, fonts, typography and book design. The collection is developed further by acquiring current works by innovative graphic designers, advertising agencies, the legacies of important designers as well as examples of the corporate design of important companies.

Applied Art Collection

The Applied Art Collection includes over 15 000 pieces and is, alongside the Graphics Collection, the oldest collection of the Museum of Design Zürich and one of the most important collections of international applied art in Switzerland. Originally put together for educational purposes and to benefit commerce and industry, the focal points of the collection lie in the 19th and 20th centuries.

In geographical terms it is concentrated on Europe, the USA and modern Japan. It includes textiles, ceramics and glass from the historicist era to the present day. The Jugendstil section with groups of works by William Morris, Emile Gallé, René Lalique, Hermann Obrist and Henry van de Velde enjoys an international reputation.

The finest items include a unique collection of puppets by 20th century artists such as Sophie Taeuber-Arp, and an important collection of musical instruments comprising around 250 historic pieces.

Research and services

The contents of the collections are continuously analyzed and researched in collaboration with the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK) as well as other university-level institutions with the aim of contextually positioning them from a present day viewpoint and opening them up for cross-disciplinary projects.

In addition to study, documentation and conservation, other services such as research, specialist evaluations and reproductions are also offered.

Publications

The Museum of Design Zürich produces publications, either self-printed or in collaboration with well-known publishing houses, which function as an important part of the exhibition program. These include thematically organized series such as the "Design Collection" or the "Poster Collection" as well as anthologies about classics of design history or current themes, and monographs about pioneers in the fields of theory and practice.

Through their innovative design and the precision with which they are made, the publications of the Museum of Design Zürich themselves make a contribution to design history, as is demonstrated by the many prizes and awards they have won.

External links

* [http://www.museum-gestaltung.ch/E_welcome.html Homepage Museum of Design Zurich]
* [http://sammlungen-archive.zhdk.ch/code/emuseum.asp The Museum's collections online]
* [http://www.museum-gestaltung.ch/e-shop Books and posters at the E-Shop]