Werkbundarchiv – museum of things — Attraction in Berlin

The Museum der Dinge has been collecting everyday objects since the 1970s and now it holds over 35,000 unique items in it’s vintage museum. The space is arranged around an “open storage” model that is continually updated and reconsidered. The objects on display are endlessly eclectic, but all share a sharp and austere quality of design. There are scientific instruments, Nazi propaganda pins, and children’s toys. Some of the objects are organized by color, some by theme.

Most museums strive to preserve the more distant past, but the Museum der Dinge is focused almost exclusively on the 20th and 21st century, and the mass-produced, product-based culture that so often defines it.

Starring at the shelves may compel visitors to ask themselves: why do people like objects? The Museum der Dinge is a perfect study site for design students, an inspiration for creative people and a delight to the eyes of...

I think this may be my favourite museum I've ever visited. It's small but very easy to spend a lot of time in.

The displays in the central row of cabinets are well curated and tell the story of the German Werkbund. It was incredibly interesting and I appreciated that the information was also in English. It was great to see wonderful pieces of design along with kitsch items and examples of 'bad taste.' I feel like each row of cabinets really delivered a visual history of subjects like interior decoration and Werkbund boxes.

The cabinets at the side of the room were organised into different subjects, like orange or plastic. There wasn't explanation of most of these things, but it was a fun way of displaying the assorted items that didn't really go anywhere else. I loved the shelf of rude mugs!

If you're at all interested in design it's a brilliant way to spend...

Interesting small museum with a unique collection of mostly everyday objects (furniture, kitchenware, toys etc). It has a focus on industrial design and production. Its collection ranges from some pre-industrial manufactured to contemporary mass produced objects. What was particularly interesting was that it provided not only examples of exeptional objects of each time period but also shows average or even poor examples. I found this aspect unique to this museum, as it brought to light a certain survivorship bias one can have when thinking of the past. Where we think that objects were made to higher standards than today since we only see the surviving exeptional examples that did not end up...