Museum of Design Zürich
Encyclopedia
The Museum of Design, Zurich (German
: Museum für Gestaltung Zürich) is a museum for industrial design
, visual communication
, architecture, and craft in Zurich
, Switzerland
.
) are of international importance.
The Museum of Design is located in Zürich's Kreis 5, close to Zürich Hauptbahnhof. 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). The museum also operates the Museum Bellerive, located in a former villa on the shores of Lake Zurich
. It contains the museum's collection of Applied Art.
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 Zurich University of the Arts) 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 houses the collection of glass, ceramic, wood, metal and textiles.
s within the museum, three temporary exhibitions in the Museum Bellerive and two 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.
The exhibitions, which are mostly interdisciplinary in character, focus on historical phenomena, contemporary tendencies and innovative approaches. Backed by sound scholarship, exhibitions are presented in a visually interesting and engaging way. Their aim is to appeal to both a broad general public, as well those with specialized knowledge.
In translating the themes and concepts of the visual communication
into exhibitions, the Museum of Design works from project to project with different teams of exhibition designers, architects and visual designers. This approach has resulted in design awards for the museum's exhibitions and related publications.
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.
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.
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 guide
s, patent specifications
, advertising material
and source texts, as well as parts of the archives of design studios, companies and associations.
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 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
and information graphics
, font
s, 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.
Housed in the Museum Bellrive, the Applied Art Collection includes over 15,000 pieces and is one of the most important collections of international applied art in Switzerland. 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 USA and modern Japan. The quality of the collection is high and contains examples of work by well known artists, designers and craftspeople. It is justly famous for its Jugendstil department, which contains works by William Morris
, Emile Gallé
, René Lalique
, Hermann Obrist
and Henry van de Velde
. It has a well-known collection of marionettes and puppets that includes works by Sophie Taeuber-Arp
and Alexandra Exter. 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
, Erwin Eisch
, Marvin Lipofsky
, Harvey Littleton
and Mary Shaffer.
of classic design history and current themes, and monograph
s about pioneers in the fields of theory and practice.
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
: Museum für Gestaltung Zürich) is a museum for industrial design
Industrial design
Industrial design is the use of a combination of applied art and applied science to improve the aesthetics, ergonomics, and usability of a product, but it may also be used to improve the product's marketability and production...
, visual communication
Visual communication
Visual communication as the name suggests is communication through visual aid and is described as the conveyance of ideas and information in forms that can be read or looked upon...
, architecture, and craft in Zurich
Zürich
Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...
, Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
.
Overview
The museum is part of the Department of Cultural Analysis of the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK).The museum's four extensive collections (Poster, Graphics, Design and Applied ArtApplied art
Applied art is the application of design and aesthetics to objects of function and everyday use. Whereas fine arts serve as intellectual stimulation to the viewer or academic sensibilities, the applied arts incorporate design and creative ideals to objects of utility, such as a cup, magazine or...
) are of international importance.
The Museum of Design is located in Zürich's Kreis 5, close to Zürich Hauptbahnhof. 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). The museum also operates the Museum Bellerive, located in a former villa on the shores of Lake Zurich
Lake Zurich
Lake Zurich is a lake in Switzerland, extending southeast of the city of Zurich. It is also known as Lake Zürich and Lake of Zürich. It lies approximately at co-ordinates ....
. It contains the museum's collection of Applied Art.
History and buildings
Situated in Zurich's former School of Arts and CraftsApplied art
Applied art is the application of design and aesthetics to objects of function and everyday use. Whereas fine arts serve as intellectual stimulation to the viewer or academic sensibilities, the applied arts incorporate design and creative ideals to objects of utility, such as a cup, magazine or...
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 Zurich University of the Arts) 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
Modern architecture
Modern architecture is generally characterized by simplification of form and creation of ornament from the structure and theme of the building. It is a term applied to an overarching movement, with its exact definition and scope varying widely...
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 houses the collection of glass, ceramic, wood, metal and textiles.
Exhibitions
The Museum of Design shows between five and seven temporary exhibitions annually in the hall and the gallery of the main building, small interventionArt intervention
Art intervention is an interaction with a previously existing artwork, audience or venue/space. It has the auspice of conceptual art and is commonly a form of performance art. It is associated with the Viennese Actionists, the Dada movement and Neo-Dadaists...
s within the museum, three temporary exhibitions in the Museum Bellerive and two 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.
The exhibitions, which are mostly interdisciplinary in character, focus on historical phenomena, contemporary tendencies and innovative approaches. Backed by sound scholarship, exhibitions are presented in a visually interesting and engaging way. Their aim is to appeal to both a broad general public, as well those with specialized knowledge.
In translating the themes and concepts of the visual communication
Visual communication
Visual communication as the name suggests is communication through visual aid and is described as the conveyance of ideas and information in forms that can be read or looked upon...
into exhibitions, the Museum of Design works from project to project with different teams of exhibition designers, architects and visual designers. This approach has resulted in design awards for the museum's exhibitions and related publications.
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. 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 (Plakatraum)
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 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
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
, Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
, Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
, the former Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
and the USA.
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 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
Technical drawing
Technical drawing, also known as drafting or draughting, is the act and discipline of composing plans that visually communicate how something functions or has to be constructed.Drafting is the language of industry....
, user guide
User guide
A user guide or user's guide, also commonly known as a manual, is a technical communication document intended to give assistance to people using a particular system...
s, patent specifications
Patent
A patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention....
, advertising material
Advertising
Advertising is a form of communication used to persuade an audience to take some action with respect to products, ideas, or services. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering, although political and ideological advertising is also common...
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 to the present. The diversity of works and its current focus on European graphic designGraphic design
Graphic design is a creative process – most often involving a client and a designer and usually completed in conjunction with producers of form – undertaken in order to convey a specific message to a targeted audience...
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 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
Advertising is a form of communication used to persuade an audience to take some action with respect to products, ideas, or services. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering, although political and ideological advertising is also common...
and information graphics
Information graphics
Information graphics or infographics are graphic visual representations of information, data or knowledge. These graphics present complex information quickly and clearly, such as in signs, maps, journalism, technical writing, and education...
, font
Font
In typography, a font is traditionally defined as a quantity of sorts composing a complete character set of a single size and style of a particular typeface...
s, typography
Typography
Typography is the art and technique of arranging type in order to make language visible. The arrangement of type involves the selection of typefaces, point size, line length, leading , adjusting the spaces between groups of letters and adjusting the space between pairs of letters...
and book design
Book design
Book design is the art of incorporating the content, style, format, design, and sequence of the various components of a book into a coherent whole....
. 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 (Museum Bellerive)
William Morris
William Morris 24 March 18343 October 1896 was an English textile designer, artist, writer, and socialist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and Crafts Movement...
, Emile Gallé
Émile Gallé
Émile Gallé was a French artist who worked in glass, and is considered to be one of the major forces in the French Art Nouveau movement.- Biography :...
, René Lalique
René Lalique
René Jules Lalique was a French glass designer known for his creations of perfume bottles, vases, jewellery, chandeliers, clocks and automobile hood ornaments. He was born in the French village of Ay on 6 April 1860 and died 5 May 1945...
, Hermann Obrist
Hermann Obrist
Hermann Obrist was a German sculptor of the Jugendstil movement. He studied Botany and History in his youth whose influence one can perceive in his later work in the field of applied arts...
and Henry van de Velde
Henry van de Velde
Henry Clemens Van de Velde was a Belgian Flemish painter, architect and interior designer. Together with Victor Horta and Paul Hankar he could be considered one of the main founders and representatives of Art Nouveau in Belgium...
. It has a well-known collection of marionettes and puppets that includes works by Sophie Taeuber-Arp
Sophie Taeuber-Arp
Sophie Taeuber-Arp was a Swiss artist, painter and sculptor. Born in Davos, Switzerland, Sophie Täuber began her art studies in her homeland, at the School of Applied Arts in St. Gallen...
and Alexandra Exter. 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
Dale Chihuly is an American glass sculptor and entrepreneur.-Biography:Chihuly graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School in Tacoma, Washington. He enrolled at the College of the Puget Sound in 1959...
, Erwin Eisch
Erwin Eisch
Erwin Eisch is a German artist who works with glass. He is also a painter, draughtsman and printmaker. With that of his friend and colleague in glass, Harvey Littleton, Eisch's work in glass embodies the ideas of the international Studio Glass movement...
, Marvin Lipofsky
Marvin Lipofsky
Marvin Lipofsky is an American glass artist. He was one of the six students that Studio Glass founder Harvey Littleton instructed under an independent study program for the University of Wisconsin-Madison in fall 1962 and spring 1963...
, Harvey Littleton
Harvey Littleton
Harvey Littleton is an American educator and glass artist. Born in Corning, New York, he grew up in the shadow of Corning Glassworks, where his father headed Research and Development during the 1930s...
and Mary Shaffer.
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 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 anthologiesAnthology
An anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler. It may be a collection of poems, short stories, plays, songs, or excerpts...
of classic design history and current themes, and monograph
Monograph
A monograph is a work of writing upon a single subject, usually by a single author.It is often a scholarly essay or learned treatise, and may be released in the manner of a book or journal article. It is by definition a single document that forms a complete text in itself...
s about pioneers in the fields of theory and practice.