How would the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich need to be set up to make it a cool place for children? What kind of rooms do they want? What could exhibitions look like? Where do they feel comfortable? How can it be interesting?

In the building on Ausstellungsstrasse, the Design Kids examined the foyer with store and café, the exhibition rooms, the vestibule, the Swiss Design Lounge, the studio, the corridors and staircases.

In sketches, plans, color differentiations and words, they recorded what distinguishes these rooms and paths from a young perspective: How big are they, how high, how dark, how bright, how warm, how cold, pleasant or uncomfortable? What functions do these places have? How are they designed and equipped? The investigations could be based on precise measurements - e.g. step dimensions - or merely on personal impressions and feelings. There was no right or wrong here. What was desired were individual perceptions and visualizations.

In the next step, the young experts built their own ideas for a museum of the future as small presentation models. Putting three-dimensional experiences on paper in two-dimensional floor plans or wall designs was a challenging process. The collected impressions and ideas were taken to the vestibule, where the Design Kids taped the vision of their dream museum to the floor.

The young plans could be viewed by the museum team and public for a few days: they ranged from essential facilities such as an elevator, toilet and waste garbage can to exhibition spaces, places to relax and be active, through to more utopian ideas of a place to destroy things (an interesting variation on deacession) or a climbing wall.

Secondary school students worked on similar tasks in Project Class #5: Young Spaces and came up with comparable results. The Swiss Design Lounge and the studio ranked alongside the exhibitions and the café at the top of the popularity scale. It is not only young people who appreciate the qualities of these spaces, which make the museum a social place. The experiences and findings from both courses will be incorporated into the concept and educational program for a new permanent exhibition of the collections, which will open in the Toni-Areal in 2025.

One of the children's declared wishes was to be able to work together on something big again, on a scale that is not possible at home. This wish was fulfilled in Design Kids Club #10: Space Lab.

Im Rahmen des dreijährigen Outreachprojekts (April 2021 bis März 2024) öffnete sich das Museum für Gestaltung Zürich jugendgemässen Fragestellungen und Perspektiven. Im Fokus standen dabei das in der Sammlung bewahrte Kulturerbe, das Ausloten der spezifischen Potenziale von Designvermittlung sowie museologische und strategische Fragestellungen.