Exhibition Period: 1 June 2021 - 25 August 2021
Exhibition Venue: 1st Floor Exhibition Hall, Tsinghua University Art Museum

Over a century, people eventually realized that designs are the windows through which industry benefits people. Modern design, born in the age of industrialization and mechanization, is a brand-new product towards which people have mixed feelings. Therefore, a medium is needed to bridge and integrate the old with the new, leading people to the new world that they await. However, the multiple dimensions of modern design signify the twists and turns of this development.

The exhibition“Design Utopia 1880-1980” shows us this fascinating and vivid history, which we call the time of Utopia. 158 modern designs in this exhibition jointly build a reflection of how people innovated within restrictions for over a century. In this time of Utopia, where the image of the world was redesigned constantly, and where the roles of the great opposites “natural-artificial” and “design-art” were turned upside-down and inside-out, was also a place where our poetic vocation was revived by a cocktail of craftsmanship, I.T. new materials and innovative methods. The élite designers at that time not only focused on creating alternative industrial products, but also tried to wake the human consciousness, which they believed had been hypnotized in the early industrial age. These classical designs reflected the state of the society as well as man’s will to undergo conscious activities.

Source: Tsinghua University Art Museum
Editors: Guo Lili, John Olbrich