Design for Living

An exhibition in the Tower Foyer Gallery, Tower Building, University of Dundee

19 January - 24 February 2006
Mon-Fri 9.30am-8.30pm, Sat 9.30am-4.30pm
Admission Free

Design for Living reveals how design influences and shapes our lives.

A variety of artworks and artefacts from the University Museum Collections invite you to consider the invisible link between the objects, dissolving the boundaries between art, science and everyday life.

Design shapes our consciousness, reconfigures our spaces and transforms the very nature of life itself.

Curated by Phoebe Lowe, Postgraduate Student - M Litt Museums & Gallery Studies, University of St Andrews

The exhibition Design for Living at the Tower Foyer Gallery, University of Dundee, was opened on Friday 19th January 2007 by Jonathan Baldwin, Lecturer in Design History, Theory and Practice at Duncan of Jordanstone College.

The lively and stimulating keynote speech, delivered to an invited audience from the University of Dundee, the University of St Andrews and members of the public, congratulated Phoebe Lowe for her curation of an interesting and challenging exhibition debut "which is asking all the right questions about design".

The exhibition encourages the viewer to question why items are chosen to be kept by museums and confronts the proposition that the moment something is removed from its context it is no longer design, it is art. Jonathan advised the audience that

"Curators and design academics have a hugely important role and can make or break reputations - they make value judgements on what is important, what to keep, what is of value".

The audience were urged to consider that "Design is for living in, living on, or living with" and "maybe the best design museum is your home". After all, it is not the design or aesthetic of an object that is important, but ultimately what people have used the object for that is of prime importance.