Few museums manage to feel as contemporary as the objects they display. The Design Museum does. Tucked just off Kensington High Street, this is London’s home for industrial design, architecture, fashion, and graphics — a space that treats the everyday object as seriously as fine art.

The Design Museum galleries entry

A building reborn

The museum occupies the former Commonwealth Institute, a modernist landmark reimagined by John Pawson in 2016. Its defining feature is a soaring hyperbolic paraboloid roof — a geometry that makes the atrium feel both expansive and intimate. Sunlight slips across oak staircases and pale concrete, creating a backdrop that feels almost Scandinavian in its restraint.

Have you ever noticed how design museums often become their own exhibits? The Design Museum embodies that perfectly: the building and its contents in quiet dialogue.

What you’ll find inside

The permanent collection, Designer Maker User, tells the story of design from multiple perspectives. A Vespa scooter, a Sony Walkman, a Kalashnikov rifle — each object chosen not only for its form, but for the social narratives it carries. It is a gallery that moves beyond aesthetics, tracing how design shapes behaviour and identity.

Temporary exhibitions keep the museum firmly in the present. Blockbusters on fashion icons such as Azzedine Alaïa or Stanley Kubrick’s cinematic design share the calendar with explorations of digital futures, sustainable architecture, and contemporary furniture. The result is a museum that feels more like an ongoing conversation than a static display.