From the World to the Museum. Product Design, Cultural Heritage, Design Museum of Barcelona

In almost everything we do throughout the day, we use one or more objects. If we want to sit down, we use a chair; to do laundry, we use a washing machine; to see each other, we turn on lights… These objects, which have a host of different designs and purposes, accompany us throughout our lives and show us how just as the world changes, so do objects.

How is it, then, that certain objects come to be part of the Museum’s collection but not others? Each of the pieces on display is considered a representative sample of the design of its time, of the different material and technical contributions proposed by their designers, as well as of their sociocultural resonance.

Product design is one of our great forms of cultural heritage. After all, when we set our sights on Barcelona or Catalonia, now or a few years from now, we will only be able to understand how we lived if we know what objects we had by our sides, and some of them are now part of the Museum’s collection.

Reference
Some objects stand out because of their meaning, while others leap out because of their historical or sociocultural importance. They are the exponents, the most representative icons of a period or a peak in design. There are also prototypes, the first models by designers, while other objects are personalisations, made to match the client’s tastes or personal needs. There are even vanguards, the objects that provide an original solution that makes them stand out from the crowd for the first time.

Materiality
Materials and techniques are the basic elements with which designers develop their projects. From handcrafting to state-of-the-art technology, they design their objects with either traditional materials or others that have never been used for that purpose before. The procedures they use to make these objects, their conceptual and constructive contributions or the features they offer users are the key elements which define the end product.

Context
When society accepts objects, they often survive on the market. Some of them win prizes for their quality, while others are recognised for having become symbols of an era or a specific event. Others are popular thanks to their functionality or appearance, and lately many of them have won fans because of their sustainability in favour of more rational consumption

Product Design
Created in 1994 with the aim of continuing with this new discipline, the collections of decorative arts stopped at the beginning of the 20th century, this collection to pay attention to the aforementioned phenomenon and is delimited by thematic, territorial and temporal areas .

His background includes productions, larger companies and most of Catalan and Spanish authors from the thirties of the twentieth century, represented the diversity of the types to which the design is applied. It is the first and only collection on a national scale that brings together this diversity, and the first to be displayed on a permanent basis. Furniture, lamps, vehicles, containers, instruments and equipment make up the thickness of objects in a collection that reaches 2,000 pieces.

With changes in production systems and in the same conception of design as at the end of the twentieth century, the collection has continued to be shaped with new criteria, thus incorporating eco-design or the latest production of 3D printed objects, of which the museum has created the first public fund of international production in Spain.

Representative of our time, it is a living collection that regularly raises its collection and guarantees its contemporaneity thanks to the donations and the collection of all the Delta Prizes granted by the ADI-FAD since 1961, which, by agreement, from 1995, almost all of the winning pieces are entered.

Design Museum of Barcelona
The Museu del Disseny de Barcelona, is a new center of Barcelona’s Institute of Culture, which works to promote better understanding and good use of the design world, acting as a museum and laboratory. It focuses on 4 branches or design disciplines: space design, product design, information design and fashion.

The Museu del Disseny de Barcelona is the Catalan capital’s centre devoted to the arts of the object and design. The collection presents more than 70,000 objects, comprising decorative arts, ceramics, textiles and clothing, and graphic arts.

The Museum is the result of the merging of several previous existing museums, such as the Museu de les Arts Decoratives, the Museu Tèxtil i d’Indumentària and the Gabinet de les Arts Gràfiques collection. The opening of the new headquarters, located on Plaça de les Glòries, next to Torre Agbar, was set gradually during 2014.