Design Exchange

Design Exchange (DX)

Established	1994
Location	234 Bay Street, Toronto, Canada
Type	Design, Art Museum and Education Centre
Visitors	225 000 +
President	Shauna Levy
Public transit access	King  504
Website	dx.org

Design Exchange (DX), a not-for-profit museum funded by its members and donors, is Canada’s only museum dedicated exclusively to the pursuit of design excellence and preservation of design heritage. Design Exchange is located in Toronto's financial district in the historic Toronto Stock Exchange building. At the crossroads of multiple disciplines, from furniture and architecture to graphics and fashion, DX exhibitions, talks, workshops, and youth education programs are curated to reflect the popular zeitgeist and contemporary culture while demonstrating the relevance and importance of design to everyday life. DX is committed to delivering accessible design experiences and education and aims to provide the tools necessary to connect design learning to the ordinary and extraordinary.

The DX contains the Permanent Collection of Canadian Industrial Design and is home to the Clairtone archives, Fred Moffat archives and Thomas Lamb archives.

History

In the 1980s, fueled by closing of the federal agency, Design Canada, in 1985, followed by the University of Toronto's (soon rescinded) announcement in 1986 that it intended to close its school of architecture, members of the design community began to express the need for a focus for Canadian design.

In 1983 the Toronto Stock Exchange had abandoned its historic home of the last 46 years at 234 Bay Street. Olympia and York (O&Y) purchased the building which was designated a heritage property. In return for the air rights to build an office tower on the site, O&Y agreed to retain and restore the building.

O&Y commissioned a study to consider the idea of using the trading floor as a public facility. The study indicated that Toronto designers would support a cultural design centre. In January 1986, a group of designers organized an event to lobby Toronto City Hall in support of the initiative. City officials recognized a body of ten citizens as “The Group for the Creation of a Design Centre in Toronto”, which was incorporated on February 6, 1987 and came to be known as the Design Exchange.

At the prompting of the citizens' group, city staff funded a study which determined that a design centre in the old Toronto Stock Exchange “was both possible and desirable.”

In 1986, O&Y sold the Bay Street property to Cadillac Fairview and The Toronto Dominion Bank (Toronto-Dominion Centre West Limited), conditional on the design centre concept being retained. The new owner was also required to provide $500,000 to the City for 25 years, which would in turn, be passed along (minus a 10% holdback) onto the design centre to offset operating costs. This agreement, in effect, gave the Design Exchange operating rights in the historic building.

In 1988 the design centre was named the Design Exchange and the original citizens' group was made the founding board. The group established a Board of Management (which included the founding board and citizens and a couple of city councillors). Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg Architects was commissioned to renovate and enlarge the non-heritage-designated spaces (exhibition spaces, administrative office space, the resource centre and meeting rooms).

The same year the Group for the Creation of a Design Centre in Toronto began a capital campaign drive aimed at raising funds from the private and public sectors. In 1993, after years of lobbying, the federal and provincial governments confirmed funding for capital expenses in the sum of $6.3 million. In 1994 The Group became the sub-tenant with a long-term lease until 2091. On September 21, 1994 the Design Exchange was officially opened by Prime Minister, The Right Honourable Jean Chrétien.

In 1996 the Design Exchange set a mandate for its Permanent Collection: to collect the best Canadian materials designed since 1945. As of 2016, the DX Permanent Collection contains approximately 600 items.

Design Exchange has mounted more than 400 exhibitions, organized hundreds of seminars, lectures, international conferences and educational programs and publications related to the role of design in culture, industry, and business.

In March 2012 the Design Exchange came under the directorship of Shauna Levy, and began to operate exclusively as a Design Museum - Canada's only museum dedicated exclusively to the pursuit of design excellence and the preservation of design heritage.

Under the leadership of Shauna Levy, and a renewed strategic vision embraced in March 2012, DX has hosted renowned traveling exhibitions from prestigious cultural institutions across the globe, including Stefan Sagmeister’s The Happy Show and Design Museum London’s Christian Louboutin retrospective, alongside its own This Is Not A Toy, guest curated by Pharrell Williams. Other exhibitions and events have included design elements from the National Ballet of Canada, a display of fashion items from the Hermès design house, a social history of women's undergarments, and DX Uncrated: Classic Plastics.

In May 2015, DX launched a new direction with DX Satellite, a program of exhibitions located within various neighbourhoods throughout the city. By taking cultural experiences beyond the bricks and mortar of the DX building, this new satellite series allows a broad and diverse demographic to benefit from DX programs. This includes 3DXL - A Large-Scale 3D Printing Exhibition, and Smarter.Faster.Tougher. - an exhibition on Sports, Fashion + Tech that coincided with the Pan Am Games in 2015.

Charitable Registration No. 119236214RR0001

Affiliations

The Museum is affiliated with: Canadian Museums Association, Canadian Heritage Information Network and Virtual Museum of Canada.

See also

• Industrial design

External links

Media related to Design Exchange at Wikimedia Commons

• Design Exchange