The Museum of Design, Zürich (

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

: ''Museum für Gestaltung Zürich'') is a museum for

industrial design Industrial design is a process of design applied to physical Product (business), products that are to be manufactured by mass production. It is the creative act of determining and defining a product's form and features, which takes place in adva ...

visual communication Visual communication is the use of visual elements to convey ideas and information which include (but are not limited to) signs, typography, drawing, graphic design, illustration, industrial design, advertising, animation, and electronic resourc ...

, architecture, and craft in

Zurich Zurich (; ) is the list of cities in Switzerland, largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is in north-central Switzerland, at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich. , the municipality had 448,664 inhabitants. The ...

, Switzerland.

Overview

The museum is part of the Department of Cultural Analysis of the

Zurich University of the Arts Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK, ) has approximately 2,500 students, which makes it the largest arts university in Switzerland. The university was established in 2007, following the merger between Zurich's School of Art and Design (HGKZ) and ...

(ZHdK). The museum's four extensive collections (Poster, Graphics, Design and

Applied Art The applied arts are all the arts that apply design and decoration to everyday and essentially practical objects in order to make them aesthetically pleasing."Applied art" in ''The Oxford Dictionary of Art''. Online edition. Oxford Univ ...

) are of international importance. The Museum of Design is located in Zürich's Kreis 5, close to

Zürich Hauptbahnhof Zürich Hauptbahnhof, often shortened to Zürich HB or just HB, and known in English as Zurich Main Station, is the largest railway station in Switzerland and one of the busiest in Europe. It is a major railway hub, with services to and from a ...

. Parts of its collections are housed opposite the museum's main building on Limmatstrasse (the Plakatraum, or Poster Collection), and in a commercial building on Förrlibuckstrasse (the Design Collection and Graphics Collection). Until January 2017, the museum also operated the

Museum Bellerive The Museum of Design, Zürich (German: ''Museum für Gestaltung Zürich'') is a museum for industrial design, visual communication, architecture, and craft in Zurich, Switzerland. Overview The museum is part of the Department of Cultural Anal ...

, located in a former villa on the shores of

Lake Zurich Lake Zurich (, ; ) is a lake in Switzerland, extending southeast of the city of Zurich. Depending on the context, Lake Zurich or can be used to describe the lake as a whole, or just that part of the lake downstream of the Hurden peninsula and ...

. Since 2018, the city operates the Zürcher Architekturzentrum (Zurich Center for Architecture) in the former villa.

History and buildings

Situated in Zurich's former School of

Arts and Crafts The Arts and Crafts movement was an international trend in the Decorative arts, decorative and fine arts that developed earliest and most fully in the British Isles and subsequently spread across the British Empire and to the rest of Europe and ...

the Museum of Design's main building contains an exhibition hall, gallery, reception area, cafeteria, shop and the vestibule to the lecture hall. The Museum of Design 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 (today known as the

) moved into its present building designed by Adolf Steger and Karl Egender. In its combination of aesthetic and functional qualities, the building exemplifies the Modern Architecture movement in Switzerland. In 1968 the Museum of Design acquired the former home of the textile manufacturer Julian Bloch and moved part of its Applied Art collection into it. Renamed the Museum Bellerive, the building housed the collection of glass, ceramic, wood, metal and textiles until 2017, when the museum was closed. Its collection was moved to a new location at Toni Areal, a building complexed opened in 2014 which is shared with the University of the Arts and the

University of Applied Sciences A vocational university or university of applied sciences (UAS), less commonly called a polytechnic university is an institution of higher education and increasingly research that provides applied professional education and grants academic de ...

Exhibitions

The Museum of Design shows between five and seven temporary exhibitions annually in the hall and the gallery of the main building, small interventions within the museum, and temporary exhibitions at Toni Areal and in the Plakatraum. Most of the exhibitions shown in the Museum of Design are produced in-house and are developed in dialogue with the museum collections or through research projects. Exhibitions loaned from other institutions make up a small part of the exhibition program. Exhibitions 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.

Collections

The four collections of the Museum of Design emerged from a teaching collection amassed by the Museum of Arts and Crafts.

Poster Collection (Plakatraum)

The Poster Collection comprises 330,000 posters (of which 120,000 have been photographed and indexed) and documents the international history of the poster from its mid-19th-century origins 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 Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

, Japan,

Cuba Cuba, officially the Republic of Cuba, is an island country, comprising the island of Cuba (largest island), Isla de la Juventud, and List of islands of Cuba, 4,195 islands, islets and cays surrounding the main island. It is located where the ...

, the former

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

and the United States.

Design Collection

The Design Collection includes 10,000 products and 20,000 examples of packaging produced by famous designers, as well as representative examples of anonymous everyday design. Mass-produced products from the 20th century and the present are collected, with emphasis 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 Swiss most commonly refers to: * the adjectival form of Switzerland *Swiss people Swiss may also refer to: Places *Swiss, Missouri * Swiss, North Carolina *Swiss, West Virginia *Swiss, Wisconsin Other uses * Swiss Café, an old café located in ...

since 1989) the

Swiss Confederation Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerlan ...

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 guide A user guide, also commonly known as a user manual, is intended to assist users in using a particular product, service or application. It is usually written by a technician, product developer, or a company's customer service staff. Most user gu ...

s, patent specifications,

advertising material Advertising is the practice and techniques employed to bring attention to a product or service. Advertising aims to present a product or service in terms of utility, advantages, and qualities of interest to consumers. It is typically us ...

and 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 Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg ( – 3 February 1468) was a German inventor and craftsman who invented the movable-type printing press. Though movable type was already in use in East Asia, Gutenberg's invention of the printing ...

to the present. 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 textbooks from the 15th to the 20th century. Press work, East Asian works, artists books, photographs and commercial art were added later. Today collecting concentrates on

advertising Advertising is the practice and techniques employed to bring attention to a Product (business), product or Service (economics), service. Advertising aims to present a product or service in terms of utility, advantages, and qualities of int ...

and

information graphics Infographics (a clipped compound of " information" and " graphics") are graphic visual representations of information, data, or knowledge intended to present information quickly and clearly.Doug Newsom and Jim Haynes (2004). ''Public Relations ...

font In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a ''typeface'', defined as the set of fonts that share an overall design. For instance, the typeface Bauer Bodoni (shown in the figure) includes fonts " Roman" (or "regul ...

typography Typography is the art and technique of Typesetting, arranging type to make written language legibility, legible, readability, readable and beauty, appealing when displayed. The arrangement of type involves selecting typefaces, Point (typogra ...

and

book design Book design is the graphic art of determining the visual and physical characteristics of a book. The design process begins after an author and editor finalize the manuscript, at which point it is passed to the production stage. During productio ...

. 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. Originally assembled as a study collection by the Museum of Art and Design, the collection contains diverse objects in the areas of glass, ceramics, textiles and furniture spanning the 19th and 20th centuries. In geographical terms, it concentrates on Europe, the US and modern Japan. Its

Jugendstil (; "Youth Style") was an artistic movement, particularly in the decorative arts, that was influential primarily in Germany, Austria and elsewhere in Europe to a lesser extent from about 1895 until about 1910. It was the German and Austrian cou ...

department contains works by

William Morris William Morris (24 March 1834 – 3 October 1896) was an English textile designer, poet, artist, writer, and socialist activist associated with the British Arts and Crafts movement. He was a major contributor to the revival of traditiona ...

Emile Gallé Emile or Émile may refer to: * Émile (novel) (1827), autobiographical novel based on Émile de Girardin's early life * Emile, Canadian film made in 2003 by Carl Bessai * '' Emile: or, On Education'' (1762) by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a treatise o ...

René Lalique René Jules Lalique (; 6 April 1860 – 1 May 1945) was a French jeweller, medallist, and glass designer known for his creations of glass art, perfume bottles, vases, jewellery, chandeliers, clocks, and automobile hood ornaments. Life Lalique ...

Hermann Obrist Hermann Obrist (23 May 1862 at Kilchberg (near Zürich), Switzerland – 26 February 1927, Munich, Germany) was a Swiss sculptor of the Jugendstil and Art Nouveau movement. He studied Botany and History in his youth; the influence of those sub ...

and

Henry van de Velde Henry Clemens van de Velde (; 3 April 1863 – 15 October 1957) was a Belgian painter, architect, interior designer, and art theorist. Together with Victor Horta and Paul Hankar, he is considered one of the founders of Art Nouveau in Belgium ...

. It has a collection of marionettes and puppets that includes works by

Sophie Taeuber-Arp Sophie Henriette Gertrud Taeuber-Arp (; 19 January 1889 – 13 January 1943) was a Swiss artist, painter, sculptor, textile designer, furniture and interior designer, architect, and dancer. Born in 1889 in Davos and raised in Trogen, Switzerlan ...

and

Alexandra Exter Aleksandra Aleksandrovna Ekster (née Grigorovich; ; ; 18 January 1882 – 17 March 1949), also known as Alexandra Exter, was a Russian and French painter and designer. As a young woman, her studio in Kiev attracted all the city's creative lum ...

. The museum's collection of musical instruments is composed of around 200 historic pieces. Its glass department is particularly strong in objects made from 1880 to after 1970 and includes glass designed and/or made by Jaroslava Brychtová and Stanislav Libenský, Pavel Hlava, Eric Höglund, Livio Seguso and Jan Zoritchak. The Studio Glass generation of artists is represented in objects by, among others,

Dale Chihuly Dale Chihuly ( ; born September 20, 1941) is an American glass artist and entrepreneur. He is well known in the field of Glassblowing, blown glass, "moving it into the realm of large-scale sculpture". Early life Dale Patrick Chihuly was born on ...

Erwin Eisch Erwin Eisch (; 18 April 1927 – 25 January 2022) was a German artist who worked with glass. He was also a painter, draughtsman, and printmaker. Eisch's work in glass, along with that of his friend and colleague Harvey Littleton, embodies the id ...

, Marvin Lipofsky,

Harvey Littleton Harvey Littleton (June 14, 1922 – December 13, 2013) was an American glass artist and educator, one of the founders of the studio glass movement; he is often referred to as the "Father of the Studio Glass Movement". Born in Corning, New York, ...

and Mary Shaffer.

Pavillon Le Corbusier

Centre Le Corbusier 2011-10-14 16-30-30 ShiftN

The Pavillon Le Corbusier will be renovated until spring 2019. From then on, the Museum für Gestaltung will operate the pavilion. A jury of experts unanimously chose the concept in September 2017 since the concept convinced with an "attractive, tailor-made programme for exhibitions and accompanying events". In December 2016, the city parliament had approved operating subsidies of CHF 500,000 per annum for the new sponsorship for the years 2019 to 2022. In addition, the city will be exempted from rent of CHF 220,000 per annum.

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 An academic discipline or academic field is a subdivision of knowledge that is taught and researched at the college or university level. Disciplines are defined (in part) and recognized by the academic journals in which research is published, a ...

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 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 In book publishing, an anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler; it may be a collection of plays, poems, short stories, songs, or related fiction/non-fiction excerpts by different authors. There are also thematic and ge ...

of classic design history and current themes, and

monograph A monograph is generally a long-form work on one (usually scholarly) subject, or one aspect of a subject, typically created by a single author or artist (or, sometimes, by two or more authors). Traditionally it is in written form and published a ...

s about pioneers in the fields of theory and practice.

References

External links

Museum of Design Zürich

The Museum's collections online
{{DEFAULTSORT:Museum Of Design, Zurich Buildings and structures completed in 1933 Art museums and galleries established in 1878 Art museums and galleries in Switzerland Museums in Zurich University museums in Switzerland Constructivist buildings and structures Cultural property of national significance in the canton of Zurich Design museums in Switzerland 1878 establishments in Switzerland Zurich University of the Arts 20th-century architecture in Switzerland