Cube, the Netherlands' first design museum, opens this weekend with two internationally orientated exhibitions.
In Designing the World, the museum presents fifty masterpieces from world-famous design museums. By displaying these designs, from historical to modern and from all over the world, the exhibition creates a culturally diverse picture of how people shape the world in relation to their position on the globe. The objects were selected by Cooper Hewitt New York, the London Design Museum, Design Indaba in Cape Town, The Mind Museum in Manila and the Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences in Sydney.
The second exhibition, titled Designing Identities, is the result of a collaboration with the German Red Dot Institute, which awards annual prizes to ground-breaking design. German and Dutch design enjoys international fame. Labels such as “Dutch Design” and “Made in Germany” largely define the image of these two export countries. Approximately fifty Red Dot prize-winning objects from the Netherlands and Germany have been selected for this exhibition. They reveal that borders not only separate but also connect.
Cube is not just a design museum: it focuses on “design for human needs”, such as health, food, shelter, safety, security and welfare. In short: design that has an impact on the world. Cube presents exhibitions showcasing pioneering international and Euregional design. Cube also acts as a multidisciplinary laboratory where visitors work on innovative product design along with international students and designers in co-creation.
Cube is located on Museumplein in Kerkrade. The square and the adjacent Columbus museum will open at the same time as Cube. Here, in Earth, our planet, our home, visitors can admire what has only been seen by astronauts, until now, in the world's very first reverse planetarium: the view of the earth from space. The third museum located on Museumplein is the Continium Discovery Centre. This museum will reopen its doors to the public after being closed for over a year due to new building works. Continium revolves around visitors discovering the world of science and technology and how these fields influence our daily lives in the past, present and the future.
