The Design Museum breaks new ground

“This is one of the best days of my long life.” So said Terence Conran at the ground breaking ceremony for the new home of the Design Museum at the Commonwealth Institute, Kensington.

The Museum’s leading lights – including Deyan Sudjic, the current Director, Terence, the founder, and John Pawson, the architect behind the Institute’s conversion – gathered to celebrate a new phase in the Museum’s history.

Gordon’s Q&A with Terence Conran

To celebrate the launch of our Ten Green Bottles collaboration, we went over to Diageo HQ for some lovely elderflower and strawberry G&Ts.

Here’s the Conran work in pride of place in Diageo’s reception:

The Ten Green Bottles artwork at Diageo HQ

Whilst we were there, Terence answered a few questions about his history, and the world of design in general.

Yes in my back yard

Three months after Sir Terence Conran aimed his ire at Grant Shapps’ slow progress on housing, the topic is hotting up, with George Osborne calling for ‘imaginative thinking’ around green belt development, and a general consensus that the housing shortfall has become a housing crisis.

Terence criticises the Coalition’s lack of progress on housing in May

Terence on luxury

As part of our series of pieces on luxury design, we put a question to our Chairman, Sir Terence Conran:

Photo Finnish: celebrating Avotakka’s 45 years

Our (countless) Finish readers may be familiar with the Avotakka, the premier Finnish interior design magazine. Avotakka launched in December 1967, and in their inaugural issue ran a interview with a British trailblazer by the name of Terence Conran.

Looking $100 billion

Last month, we launched our new Facebook timeline, which allows you to dip into our heritage, as well as keep up to date with our latest news.

It’s a work in progress, but we think it’s already looking pretty neat.

The good people at Shiny Shiny seem to agree: they just included Conran in their roundup of ‘Cool Facebook brand timelines‘, alongside the likes of Starbucks, Red Bull, and the US Army!

You can find Conran’s Facebook page here. If there’s more you think we could be doing with it, please let us know.

The Conran Manifesto

Terence talked to the Times last week, outlining his vision for a property-based path out of recession.

Terence was interviewed off the back of an open letter to the Government (published in the Friday Times Letters section), which called for a revival of the “vision, ambition and pride” that dragged Britain out of the post-War slump. He cites new council housing and VAT exemption for the refurbishment of derelict buildings as key starting points.

“I truly believe we can build our way out of recession. There is a massive bubble of demand and one day that must burst and kickstart growth. But we need the Government to provide the pin-prick.”

Conran and Partners is currently working on 2,500 homes for house associations across the country.

EDIT: here’s the full text of Terence’s letter to the Times:

Sir,

After working in design and business for almost 60 years I am currently enduring my sixth, and without question, worst recession. During the last recession I built Europe’s largest restaurant in Soho, because I believe the way through difficult economic times is to be bold, seize opportunity and create.

At the end of the 1970s there was a housing surplus. I wouldn’t say the stock was all good quality but if somebody needed a home they stood a good chance of getting one.

That was down to the ambitious postwar political desire to transform this country and improve lives. In 2010 we built the fewest homes since the end of the Second World War.

We need that vision, ambition and pride again because I truly believe we can build our way out of recession.

Banks need to lend, developers need to commission architects, plannes need to approve projects quickly and efficiently and we need to build. There is a massive bubble of demand that must be burst to kick-start growth. We need government to provide the pinprick.

Grant Shapps, the Minister for Housing and Local Government, throws out soundbites and tweets with Blairite fervour, but doesn’t appear to actually do much.

According to the charity Empty Homes, there are nearly one million UK properties vacant, a scandal that tweeting won’t help.

Housing starts are at near record lows and Mr Shapps can’t keep blaming “the last administration”. The coalition has been in government for almost two years now and excuses have worn thin.

— Sir Terence Conran, London SE1

Patriotism and British design

Patriotism is well and truly back in vogue. It started with a murmur last year – the Royal wedding and a brief flutter of flags kickstarted Southbank’s reprisal of the 1951 Festival of Britain; a neat row of bright pastel sheds and a crescent of sand brought the charm of the British seaside resort to the Thames.

That murmur has amplified into an almightily scream of Union Jack cushions, Tube Map teatowels and ‘Keep Calm’ posters. This ‘sentiment’ trend – a nostalgia for the Britain of yore – will wax at least until the Royal Jubilee and the London Olympics are long in the memory, and perhaps until our economy gets onto a firmer footing (there is comfort in nostalgia, after all).

The currency of British iconography has never been stronger, but this is a superficial patriotism. What about modern British design – objects beautiful in form and function, designed in Britain?

At Conran, we’re passionate about it. Few could knock Britain’s design heritage – from William Morris to James Dyson, British designers have always been a force to be reckoned with. But we’re also passionate about our design future – giving British designers the chance to thrive.

One thing we could do to secure that future is better-protect our designers. ELLE Decoration UK has launched an e-petition to reform copyright protection for designers.

As things stand, works of literature, drama, music and film are protected for 70 years from the death of creator, whereas designs are only protected for 25 years from their date of invention. Michelle Ogundehin, Editor in Chief of ELLE Decoration UK and V&A Trustee, argues that this disparity harms the profitability of designing in Britain – and fosters a market for cheap fakes of classic designs.

The Conran Shop has already thrown its weight behind the ‘Fight the Fakes’ campaign, currently blowing up across the web. So too has Terence Conran, who teamed up with Michelle for a Times feature on the initiative (sadly paywalled). Terence noted that the fakes industry has “grown hugely” in the past decade, and implored the Government to look after Britain’s young designers.

The Times interview

Our Chancellor envisages “a Britain carried aloft by the march of the makers”. In that light, isn’t it time we start championing not just the design classics of the past, but also those of the future?

Let us know what you think, and check out ELLE Decoration UK’s Equal Rights For Design Facebook campaign.

Last chance to see Conran’s fab four…

If you haven’t yet visited the Terence Conran exhibition at the Design Museum yet what have you been waiting for?

The great news is the exhibition which was due to finish this coming week has now been extended, by popular demand, until the 12^th April.

However it is your last chance to see our fab foursome – a selection of bestselling Conran-designed chairs for M&S outside in the Design Museum tank.

Specially upholstered for the exhibition in our trademark Conran Blue and accessorised with Conran for M&S vases and Terence’s books this little capsule display is quite the essence of Conran. And what a location.

It’s your last chance to check them out this weekend. Stroll along the South Bank and take a look…

Read more about the exhibition here in The Telegraph 

Some of our previous blog posts…

Click here to watch a video on The Guardian’s website about how Terence changed the face of the British High Street

Or check out Terence talking to Design Museum Director Deyan Sudjic below

Terence talks to Deyan Sudjic

When Terence met Claudia: BBC Radio 2 Arts Show interview – the Festival of Britain, soup, the UK’s reputation for design and an ‘Ode to tools’….

Make sure you catch Terence’s lovely interview on the Radio 2 Arts Show with Claudia Winkleman – available on BBC i-Player until this Friday 13^th.

It’s a really charming interview: hear the great man talking about how it all began at the Festival of Britain (“people in Macintoshes suddenly seeing a bit of colour”); the embryonic entrepreneur (“sitting around with a friend drinking cider and talking about ways to make money”); setting up his first restaurant – the Soup Kitchen (“a giant vat of soup, sold at a shilling a bowl”); his favourite aspects of habitat (“the buying meetings…tremendously exciting!”); his ode to tools; passion for UK design and manufacture and what he’s most proud of today and through his long and varied career. There really is so much he could choose from….

A young Terence Conran...

Don’t miss it. Click here to listen.

He’s on from 0: 15: 30 to 0: 35: 25 – with a bit of nice music halfway through…