page_title: Design Research (store)
hierarchical_section_title: Design Research (store)
caption_attribution_description: Design Research International - Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
context_page_description: Design Research was a retail store founded in 1953 by Ben Thompson in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and which introduced the concept of lifestyle store. In the 1970s under subsequent ownership, it became a chain of a dozen stores across the United States, but went bankrupt in 1978. Thompson's goal was to provide "a place where people could buy everything they needed for contemporary living", notably modern European furnishings and in particular Scandinavian design.
  D/R has continued to have an outsized reputation: in 2000, a survey of influential design stores named D/R as number one, though it had then been closed for 22 years. The store influenced later retailers like Crate & Barrel, Design Within Reach, Pottery Barn, Workbench, and Conran's.
context_section_description: Design Research (abbreviated and trademarked as D/R) was a retail store founded in 1953 by Ben Thompson in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and which introduced the concept of lifestyle store. In the 1970s under subsequent ownership, it became a chain of a dozen stores across the United States, but went bankrupt in 1978. Thompson's goal was to provide "a place where people could buy everything they needed for contemporary living", notably modern European furnishings and in particular Scandinavian design.
  D/R has continued to have an outsized reputation: in 2000, a survey of influential design stores named D/R as number one, though it had then been closed for 22 years. The store influenced later retailers like Crate & Barrel, Design Within Reach, Pottery Barn, Workbench, and Conran's.
caption: Design Research was temporarily revived as a street-visible exhibition in 2009
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