Airport and book exhibition design for Hussein Chalayan

A sneak preview of the design for Hussein Chalayan’s upcoming show at the Design Museum reveals that its look is inspired by airports and books. Block Architecture and graphics group Åbäke are redesigning the exhibition and accompanying materials.

‘[It] will look like a mixture between an airport and a book,’ describes Åbäke designer Maki Suzuki, who is creating 1.5m high letters in shades of grey, black and white that will adorn the walls. Suzuki claims that otherwise, captions and text will be minimal, ‘to reduce distraction from the pieces’.

Block director Graeme Williamson comments that the look and feel will be ‘gallery-style, clean, elegant – a backdrop to hold the works together’. Block has named each room in the 530m2 space and is rendering the titles in dot matrix LED-signage, complementing Chalayan’s 2007 LED dress.

Chalayan and the museum appointed Åbäke in November, following its work five years ago for the designers’ second line collection, Chalayan.

Block Architecture was appointed on the strength of its work last year on Chalayan’s Dover Street Market outlet. The architect also created the designer’s flagship Tokyo store.

Åbäke has also created the exhibition guide, and a T-shirt featuring large typography that will go on sale in the Design Museum shop.

The Design Museum’s last fashion exhibition was Matthew Williamson’s retrospective, which took place in January 2007. Hussein Chalayan/ From Fashion and Back runs from 22 January to 17 May at the Design Museum, SE1.



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