Lifestyle

London Design Museum: Review

Design_Museum

Whilst trying to ease my hangover with a riverside walk I stumbled upon a futuristic car in a glass case. I had stumbled across The London Design Museum and their latest exhibition. Despite a clear disinterest in cars I was intrigued by what else this exhibition had in store.

Ever the thrifty Northerner, I wandered the riverbank for a further 10 minutes as I deliberated over the £11.85 entrance fee. My intrigue in this exhibition A Future is Here: A New Industrial Revolution became too much for my penny pinching Northern sensibilities and I ventured inside.

I was immediately drawn into the illustrated timeline of the industrial revolution, which detailed the technological advancements in industry. As a fan of Channel 4’s The Mill this gave me more of a background to this era of industrial revolution. An artist’s painting from 1913 vividly brought to life the raw power, heat and danger of one of the steelworks at the time. Another nice touch is to see how the world outside of England was advancing with pictures of the Brooklyn Bridge’s construction.

A key strength of this exhibition is showing the complex and revolutionary processes involved in the production of objects we take for granted. Being given an understanding of the history of weaving really brought home how far we’ve advanced as I watched a video of 3-D weaving of fibres for carbon based cars. Videos, products and robotic demonstrations make this an interactive experience that has something for everyone.

I couldn’t help but feel slightly sad that so much manufacturing skill and trade has been superseded by machinery, robots and 3-D printing. I can only imagine the sense of community and pride that the factory workers must have felt finishing their shift and walking together to watch their local football team. Football and industry were so interconnected at the time, shown by a picture of 22 football teams with their local industry related nicknames (blades, gunners, potters). Combined with today’s era of dubiously rich foreign owners, celebrity footballers and heavily made-up WAG’s made me pine for this forgotten age of local football and industry. It also hit home that advancement often comes at a price.

This exhibition is family friendly with notepads and pencils available to allow people to sketch impressions of the products and installations. There is also a quiet corner with numerous books on industry which you can read while your children add their drawings to the illustration wall.

I would recommend this exhibition whole-heartedly as it gives a real insight how life must have been during the industrial revolution and shows how far our manufacturing industry has advanced over the last 200 years.

The Future is Here: A New Industrial Revolution runs until 29th October.

Have a look at their site: http://designmuseum.org/

Written by Martin Stocks