Wim Crouwel exhibition at the Design Museum

Above:  having read a review (here) of the Wim Crouwel exhibition at the Design Museum I felt sufficiently motivated to go and see it, although the Design Museum is not the easiest place to get to.  I entered the exhibition expecting to experience coldness, aloofness, alienation.  And it was all of those things.  But surprisingly this austere astringency was not unpleasant.  The entrance was guarded by a gigantic portrait of Wim Crouwel in a white suit (looking starched and inhuman).  Mostly flat visual displays, white space everywhere, hushed tones from the visitors.  No photography allowed, preserving the uncommercialised integrity of the great man's canon of work.  A section described Wim Crowel's early interest in modern architecture, and I immediately felt I understood him.  His typography is type trying to become three-dimensional buildings. 

While I was in the Design Museum I also had a look at the Designs of the Year exhibition, which was much more accessible. 

Above:  clothes on intimidating-looking mannequins.

Above:  book designs with sensibly narrow blocks of text (the eye gets exhausted if expected to read more than ten words per line).

Above:  design for a "self-build" house.  A first sight very attractive, but that white wouldn't stay clean for very long, and the yellow light that looks so inviting would be irritating after a while.  And I guess that the white exterior and yellow dazzle isn't meant to be real anyway.

Above:  the United Kingdom pavilion at last year's Shanghai Expo.  There was nothing inside the building - was this meant to be symbolic?  The Victorians would have filled their pavilion with manufactured goods, so does the empty interior symbolise our modern dependence on intangible services?

Above:  just as interesting as the exhibits were the people.  What sort of people go to design exhibitions?  Who are they in terms of age, gender, socio-economic group, median income, geographical location, post-graduate education etc?

Above:  when I first saw the sign I thought the exhibition was of British insurance designs of the year (perhaps some of their direct mail).  A bit specialised I thought, but might be worth seeing.  It was only when I got up there that I realised the exhibition was sponsored by British Insurance.

Above:  battered old 1988 anthology that includes a short story by Michael Bracewell.  Called Missing Margate, it is about a jejune modernist architect who decides to destroy his own buildings, one of which is called the Museum of Corporate Finance.  I like to think that somewhere this museum exists, with perhaps an exhibition of British Insurance Designs of the Year.