Museum für Gestaltung Zürich — Attraction in Zurich

The Toni-Areal site is the beating heart of the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich. Housed in a former milk processing plant, the building has been transformed into a dynamic cultural hub that it now shares with the Zurich University of the Arts. This setting gives the museum a unique energy, as students, designers, and visitors mingle in the same creative space. The exhibitions here draw from the museum’s vast collection of over half a million objects, ranging from furniture and product design to posters, textiles, and everyday artifacts. What makes Toni-Areal particularly engaging is the way it presents design as a living process. Visitors can see not only finished works but also the sketches, prototypes, and experiments that shaped them. The Swiss Design Collection is especially impressive, offering insight into the country’s long tradition of precision, clarity, and innovation. Alongside historical pieces, the museum also highlights contemporary design, showing how today’s creators reinterpret and challenge tradition. The architecture of the building itself, with its industrial past and modern reuse, mirrors this dialogue between history and the present. For anyone interested in design as both heritage and forward-looking practice, Toni-Areal is a must-visit and arguably the most comprehensive of the...

We went to great lengths to track down and travel to this museum, spending a total of over 50 francs for transportation and admittance for our group of 4. Prior to our visit I visited their website which says this: "Museum für Gestaltung in the Toni-Areal- The new location in the Toni-Areal, presents temporary exhibitions and brings together its four collections – Design, Graphics, Applied Art and Poster – with their 500'000 objects. For the first time the Museum für Gestaltung presents its collections to the public in the Schaudepot. Daily tours offer insights into this collection of international importance."

Imagine our disbelief to find that the real 'collection' displayed is ONE room of travel posters. That's it. And the person in charge told us it was OUR responsibility to visit the website and find this out. The problem is, they do not post this information, nor is it posted before you pay for admittance. No offer of a refund when we made an issue of the lack of honesty regarding the exhibits....

If you're visiting this museum, definitely opt to pay for entry to both locations. We visited this one with our kids and only had a day in Zurich so skipped the other location. That being said, the Design for All? exhibit was really cool with plenty to hold the interest of myself, my wife (who is a graphic designer), and our two kids (7 and 5).

There was a good variety of design fields represented, from engineering to signage to fashion. Our kids particularly loved learning about braille with the hands on braille Lego set.

Really nice selection in the gift shop too, and the building that houses the museum is great for a wander, with some really lovely spaces and architecture.

The location is super, being very close to...