With many cultural institutions closed due to COVID-19, production designers are unable to frequent the various art museums, galleries and archives that inform and enrich our work. With that in mind, PDC member Laura King-Pazuchowski put together a list of online archives with extensive digital and interactive tools, which we can explore from the safety of our homes.
Weil am Rhein, Germany
Vitra Design Museum is dedicated to historical and contemporary research in architecture, interior design, and the art of creative furnishings. Its extensive collection of design objects focuses on industrial furniture design and lighting. The online collection includes details about many of their objects including biographies of important designers and significant manufacturers. The collection can be sorted by designer, material, manufacturer, attributes, and more.
Brooklyn, New York
Van Alen Institute is an independent nonprofit architectural organization dedicated to improving design in the public realm. It collaborates with communities, scholars, policymakers, and professionals to develop cross disciplinary research, public programs, and design competitions to improve people’s environments. Van Alen’s archive highlights over a century of innovative thinking about design and architecture through submissions to their ongoing architectural design competitions, which have been staged since their founding in 1894.
London, England
The Institute of Making is a multidisciplinary research club interested in exploring the relationship between materials and processes. Central to the Institute is the Materials Library, a collection of “some of the most extraordinary materials on earth” gathered together to inspire makers and advance conceptualization.
Online, Europe
Europeana is a web portal that combines the collections of over 3,000 European archives, libraries, and museums to provide digital access to books, music, artworks, and more. The completely searchable collection was created by the European Union and includes access to online exhibitions.
England
A web portal sharing historical objects and archives spanning science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine. It combines digital collections from England’s Science Museum, The Science and Industry Museum, Science and Media Museum, Railway Museum, and Locomotion. The over 200,000 objects in the online database feature curated topics tracing select objects through history.
New York City, NY, USA
The New York Public Library Digital Collections contains over 800,000 digitized items including photographs, prints and maps, and more. Over 100,000 of those images in the public domain with new materials added daily. The archive contains materials on a range of topics that are sorted into subcategories including collections about pre-victorian ornament and pattern, acclaimed theatrical photographers, turn of the century posters, and children’s book illustrations.
