Werkbundarchiv - Museum der Dinge

– © Werkbundarchiv - Museum der Dinge

The Werkbundarchiv – Museum der Dinge (Museum of Things) is a museum of 20th and 21st century product culture, characterised by the industrial mass production of goods. It presents its collections of 20th century design and everyday culture in the form of a walk-through warehouse. At the heart of the institution is the archive of the German Work Federation (Werkbund), an association of artists, industrialists and politicians concerned with cultural issues founded in 1907.

Since the 1970s, the museum has been collecting objects that are important in terms of design history as a document of our modern-day society based on consumer culture. The entire collection now includes approx. 35,000 documents and approx. 20,000 objects, most of which were produced in the 20th century.

In the permanent exhibition visitors will find objects by famous designers as well as anonymous designs, functional and purist objects, so-called ‘lapses of taste’ or ‘kitsch’, branded goods and no-name products. For instance, one of the exhibits is the Frankfurt Kitchen designed in 1926 by Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, which became the architectural prototype for all modern kitchens.