Barcelona's new home of design

On the front line of de­sign

With the open­ing of the Museu del Dis­seny, Barcelona's new de­sign mu­seum, a long-winded process full of set­backs has reached fruition. Fi­nally, the city has a place to show off its de­sign her­itage, in the Dis­seny Hub Barcelona, in plaça de les Glòries, an area un­der­go­ing a trans­for­ma­tion that promises to turn it into one of the cap­i­tal's main eco­nomic, so­cial and cul­tural cen­tres. The build­ing, by the MBM Ar­qui­tectes stu­dio, was built ex­pressly for “the com­mu­nal house of the world of de­sign”, ac­cord­ing to fifth deputy mayor, Jaume Ciu­rana. Yet, what is the end of the process in ready­ing the cen­tre, is “just the be­gin­ning” for mu­seum di­rec­tor, Pilar Vélez, who is con­scious that the mu­seum has an im­por­tant role to play in re­turn­ing Barcelona to the front line of top in­ter­na­tional de­sign. It is a priv­i­leged po­si­tion that the Cata­lan cap­i­tal hap­pily en­joyed in the '90s, but which has slowly slipped from its grasp in the in­ter­ven­ing years, par­tic­u­larly since the onset of the eco­nomic cri­sis.

“De­sign is es­sen­tial for our city be­cause it brings to­gether two as­pects of our iden­tity: cre­ativ­ity and busi­ness acu­men,” said city mayor, Xavier Trias, on the mu­seum's open­ing.

Thus, the Museu del Dis­seny has a mis­sion, which it shares with the other two ten­ants in the build­ing that has be­come known as 'the sta­pler', the Fo­ment de les Arts i el Dis­seny (FAD) and the Barcelona Cen­tre de Dis­seny (BCD). The fourth in­sti­tu­tion on the same site is Clot Josep Benet pub­lic li­brary, which al­ready has close to a thou­sand vis­i­tors every day. As Trias has pointed out, “a mu­seum is not just a place to store ob­jects. The Museu del Dis­seny has to be open and in­ter­ac­tive, and gen­er­a­tor of ideas.”

This is the chal­lenge fac­ing the mu­seum and, given the Her­culean ef­forts that have been made so far to get the cen­tre up and run­ning, it must be in with a chance. The Museu del Dis­seny brings to­gether the col­lec­tions of four pre-ex­ist­ing mu­se­ums: the Museu de les Arts Dec­o­ra­tives, the Museu de Ceràmica, the Museu Tèxtil i de la In­du­mentària and the Gabi­net de les Arts Gràfiques.

In all, there are 70,000 items in all, which re­veal the wealth and di­ver­sity of the city's de­sign her­itage. Yet, this her­itage, both old and new, con­tin­ues to grow and new items will con­tin­u­ally be added, thanks in part to the gen­eros­ity of many de­sign­ers and col­lec­tors.

“The ob­ject is the great pro­tag­o­nist here,” says Vélez. It is not an ex­ag­ger­a­tion, as side by side sit fab­rics from the 3rd cen­tury with elec­tric whisks, posters ad­ver­tis­ing moth­balls with a dress by Manuel Pertegaz or a Pi­casso ce­ramic. On the whole, what­ever epoch they are from, they are every­day ob­jects that tell a story about the day-to-day life of the peo­ple who used them. In fact, the Museu del Dis­seny tells many sto­ries, split into four main ex­hi­bi­tion areas, one on each floor of the build­ing's tower. Whether the vis­i­tor starts at the top or the bot­tom, a full day is needed to see every­thing.

Until Jan­u­ary 31, the mu­seum is of­fer­ing free en­trance to see the 2,000 items cur­rently on dis­play, some of which are old favourites, while oth­ers wait their turn in the mu­seum's store­rooms. Many of the pieces have been care­fully re­stored to their for­mer glory, but there is still plenty to work to do, such as mov­ing more than 50,000 ob­jects to the mu­seum from the Palau de Pe­dralbes.

With the open­ing of the de­sign mu­seum, the Dis­seny Hub Barcelona is just about com­pletely up and run­ning, and only a few de­tails are left to fi­nalise. One such is the open­ing of a busi­ness area where a lux­ury restau­rant was orig­i­nally planned. This 600 square metre space, to be jointly run with BCD, will offer com­pa­nies work areas to de­velop their pro­jects. The busi­ness area is ex­pected to be up and run­ning within the next two years, in­vest­ment de­pend­ing.

So far, the Dis­seny Hub Barcelona has cost a total of 101 mil­lion euros, and its an­nual run­ning costs are ex­pected to be around seven mil­lion euros. Some 3.8 mil­lion of this is to cover the mu­seum's bud­get. Vis­i­tors who take ad­van­tage of the Jan­u­ary offer have a rea­son to re­turn in Feb­ru­ary to see the tem­po­rary ex­hi­bi­tion, Dis­seny per viure, cu­rated by Òscar Guayabero. The Museu del Dis­seny is fi­nally here.

Barcelona's new de­sign mu­seum is a vital cul­tural and so­cial event for many rea­sons. First, it will help re­store Barcelona to its place as a leader in de­sign. Sec­ond, the fa­cil­ity has been de­signed to allow dif­fer­ent types of ex­hi­bi­tions that would be dif­fi­cult to see in an­other venue. And third, it opens a new per­spec­tive in pre­sent­ing de­sign to a wider au­di­ence. In short, it has been con­structed using the val­ues of de­sign, the first of which is that it be use­ful to every­one.