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at the way ingenious design has shaped not just the things we use in everyday life, but the way we actually live. Through that lens, an object like Bill Moggridge’s 1979 Grid Compass laptop in the permanent collection isn’t just a curio. It’s a powerful means by which we can understand how the world around us is developing and changing. And The Design Museum, hopes McGuirk, will be a place where you can start to read that change.“That’s probably my favourite piece in the collection,” he says of the computer. “The speed and scale of change in technology is so fast that collecting several generations of laptop, iPad or mobile phone isn’t actually that interesting. But what you have with the Grid Compass is a paradigm shift, a transition to portable personal computing. This was designed in 1979, and though obviously it’s completely unrecognisable once you turn it on, in many ways the design of the laptop has hardly changed since then. It has the same DNA.”Which is in many ways the whole point of the Design Museum: less somewhere to explore outlandish design for design’s sake, and more a place to celebrate design that works so well it becomes our everyday life. That ethos has meant some controversial exhibits over the years (including the acquisition of Mikhail Kalashnikov’s AK47 assault rifl e), some groundbreaking exhibitions (Hello My Name Is Paul Smith has toured all over the world), and the seemingly bizarre: last year, there was an exhibition called 50 Years Of British Roadsigns. A completely workaday sign pointing the way to Scarborough, York and Pickering Left and below: The 1979 Grid Compass laptop computerBelow right: Current exhibition Cycle Revolution examines the history of the bicycle is now in the permanent collection. “Having objects like the road sign makes people appreciate the impact good design can have,” argues McGuirk. “The whole landscape around us is made up of design decisions, and in some ways, being in The Design Museum is almost a validation for something that obviously works.”Interestingly, the road sign is also one of the suggested images on the ‘crowdsourced wall’ that will form part of the new permanent Design Gallery. The idea is intriguing: The Design Museum is asking the public to suggest objects they think should be included – from the functional to the practical, decorative to the sculptural. It’s quite a statement of intent, in that the crowdsourced wall – in effect exhibition 26 NADFAS REVIEW / SUMMER 2016 www.nadfas.org.ukDESIGN MUSEUM