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We've included every museum in London. Use the filters to find something for you.
The Commonwealth Institute's swooping 1960s roof, rebuilt around a museum of design, with a free permanent gallery beneath it.
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Terence Conran founded the Design Museum in 1989 in a converted banana warehouse at Shad Thames, after he and Stephen Bayley had run the Boilerhouse gallery at the V&A, and in 2011 he gave £17.5 million to move it somewhere bigger. The somewhere was the Commonwealth Institute on Kensington High Street, a building of 1962 whose copper roof, a hyperbolic paraboloid that sweeps up at the corners like a tent, is one of the most striking of its decade and had stood empty for more than ten years. John Pawson gutted it and rebuilt the inside as a museum around the roof, with an atrium that shows the underside of it from every floor, and it opened on 24 November 2016 with three times the old space. In 2018 it was named European Museum of the Year.
The paid exhibitions on the ground floor are what draw the crowds, on architecture, fashion, furniture, products and graphics. Under the roof, free, is Designer Maker User, around a thousand objects from the collection arranged by who designed them, who made them and who uses them: an Anglepoise lamp, a Tube map, a road sign, chairs, telephones and a car. With a library and a learning centre on the floor between, it is the reason the roof was saved.
Step-free access
| Monday | 10:00 – 17:00 |
|---|---|
| Tuesday | 10:00 – 17:00 |
| Wednesday | 10:00 – 17:00 |
| Thursday | 10:00 – 17:00 |
| Friday | 10:00 – 18:00 |
| Saturday | 10:00 – 18:00 |
| Sunday | 10:00 – 18:00 |
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Data is compiled from public sources including OpenStreetMap, under the ODbL. Hours change often, so check before making a journey.