Design Thinkbelt
By: Dan Hill
Tags: Innovation, Museums, Policy, Design, London

Design Thinkbelt

A new form of institution for the UK’s design scene?

I was recently asked by a journalist to comment on both the new ‘design centre’ proposed for London by the ‘Cox Review on Creativity in Business’ and the future of the Design Museum, which has been much in the news recently since Alice Rawsthorn’s sudden departure. Asked as to what both should be about, and the direction that the Design Museum should go in, I hastily scribbled down the following. (Ed. This piece was first published at cityofsound.com on 28 February 2006—I would think about this, and write about this, rather differently now.)

There are rumours that the Design Museum and the London design centre suggested by the Cox Review were to be aligned — and that this was why Alice Rawsthorn really left her role at the Museum.

Let’s forget rumours. They should be combined.

With a bit of imagination, a 21st century Design Museum shouldn’t be far removed at all from the London design centre Cox suggests. The opportunity to overlap the two is too great to ignore. It could provide a real focal point, or series of focal points, for design in London and the UK.

Let’s fold the two together, combining the museum, with its archive and exhibition space, as a showcase for design, alongside the aspects of the design centre that the Cox Review suggests. In fact, to part-validate those rumours, looking at the latter review it’s hard to believe that the Cox team didn’t imagine their proposal for a London centre would overlap with the Design Museum. They obliquely suggest that the Design Museum “might also wish to play a prominent role.”

Looking at the proposed set of features for the London centre (quoted from the Cox Review):

Exhibition space (for static and travelling displays)

Seminar facilities

A hub for creative industry gatherings

Educational facilities

Space for professional and trade bodies

Retail environment/dining facilities

Incubator space for early-stage creative businesses

Serviced office/shared studio facilities for creative companies.

… all but the last two would be present in the Design Museum’s forward plan for sure. Adding in these networking facilities, drop-in business facilities, public access spaces, reference library (in the widest sense of the word), and so on would only add to the proposition.

I’d be further inclined to ensure a focus on the digital networks that design now thrives upon. These physical nodes are nothing without a supportive and flexible digital network for design, providing online social and business spaces for designers. The Design Museum’s current website generally provides an example of what not to do, often ending up inadvertently ghettoising its content and function. (Ed. I wrote this in 2006. It got better.)

Using social software to create and support design networks — to provide for and support UK-based networks for design, situated within and blurred with the wider internet — could reinforce any such physical architecture projects. This in turn enables knowledge management, incubation, promotion, discussion, and reflection.

Another serious overlap is with the V&A. That may be a merger too far; but the collections could be merged digitally at least. Imagine the combined collection of the Design Museum and V&A as an accessible archive for working designers (and possibly with further collections worldwide? Cooper-Hewitt, MoMa etc. Museums with APIs.)

This collection could have some physical presence in the building and full digital presence online. The local London showcase could present both the cream of the crop of design firms working temporarily in the building as well as holding internationally-renowned exhibitions. The focal point provided by a combined Design Museum/London design centre would generate enough clout to create shows to rival any worldwide. Worked carefully, all the aspects above support and play off each other.

If we briefly review the inspirational work of Cedric Price, particularly as applied to educational establishments, industrial nodes, or mixed-use workspaces, there are relevant un-realised ideas aplenty, for example in the the Potteries Thinkbelt or Fun Palace projects.

Thus in terms of the idea of a building itself, I’d reject the idea of the Singapore-style “-opolis” model picked up in the report. We can create presence without having to revert to edifice complex.

Following on from the supportive digital fabric suggested above, reacting to the ever-changing demands of the subject matter, and again drawing from Price and Archigram, we should look to a thoroughly adaptive building, comprising modular components which could be assembled, reconfigured or regrouped as the situation demands.

Perhaps even a connected network of buildings scattered throughout the city, just as design itself is. There are numerous sites ripe for redevelopment where such centres could exist. Again, the unrealised “anti-monument” of the Potteries Thinkbelt should be hugely relevant here.

If an actual building is required, imagine, say, the brilliant Australian architect Andrew Maynard developing these earlier modular/prefab ideas, lacing his treehouses across to the chimneys of the Battersea Power Station, a building referred to as a potential location for the new Design Museum.

The fabric of the buildings should also ripple, flex, broadcast and recede — figuratively speaking or literally; whatever works — in response to the activity of the digital networks proposed earlier. Other aspects of Price and Archigram thinking could be embraced too, in terms of their often wildly imaginative proposals for temporary exhibitions, impromptu lectures and discussions (happenings!). Spectacle, focus and presence can be achieved by numerous tactics.

Whilst such modular buildings might look as if they’ve just landed from space, where they land in the city is crucial. My experience of these things — from working on the Northern Quarter in Manchester in particular — suggest that binding such centres into existing cultures is fundamentally important. You then have the opportunity to extend these local cultures into the wider city, then the nation, then internationally. Again, a rooted yet scalable design network is key, which subsequently enables nodes to emerge.

It would be nice to think that all such possibilities are still open, yet it seems odd that the Cox Review mentions that the minimum size of the London centre should be 80,000 sqft and the new Design Museum plans are priced at £50 million. Those are oddly specific, given the lack of detail elsewhere. In general, I’m not convinced that the proposals for the design centre are that thought-through yet, but the adaptability inherent in Price’s — and Maynard’s — ideas is one way of responding to this … And another way is to fold them in with the potential of the Design Museum.

In terms of curation, the tension in the last regime, and the first, under Bayley, will never be resolved and never should be. Design as subject matter is too broad to be pinned down; another pointer towards adaptability being key. So the argument between industrial design and graphic/fashion design, say, is ultimately meaningless. They can’t be compared, and yet they’re essentially the same.

Design is a slippery subject, and that is its attraction. It should veer excitedly from Brunel to Blahnik, Calvert to Kare. The Design Museum should stand for this breadth of experience and influence. So the principle change of direction is not one of ‘editorial direction’, but of function — to merge completely with the London design centre the Cox Review proposes.