2025 – A Special Year: The Museum für Gestaltung Zürich Celebrates 150 Years

This anniversary offers the opportunity to honor the museum's rich history, highlight current developments in design, and look towards the future.

Look forward to a jubilee year full of inspiring exhibitions and exciting activities centered around the theme of design.

For those who wish to get creative themselves, we invite you to our free Open Studio every Sunday throughout the anniversary year.

In April, we will celebrate the opening of the new permanent exhibition, the Swiss Design Collection, followed by an anniversary weekend! 

The Museum für Gestaltung Zürich has an impressive history that dates back to 1875, when it was originally founded as the Arts and Crafts Museum of the City of Zurich. From 1898 to 1933, the museum was housed in the National Museum, as it did not have its own premises.

In 1933, the museum and the School of Applied Arts, established in 1878 and now known as the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK), moved into the distinctive building on Ausstellungsstrasse – an outstanding example of modernist architecture in Switzerland.

In 1968, the museum opened its second location, the Museum Bellerive on Lake Zurich, which housed craft objects until 2017. In 2014, new exhibition spaces were opened on the new ZHdK campus in the Toni-Areal in Zurich-West, uniting all four collections of the museum under one roof.

After extensive renovations, the main building on Ausstellungsstrasse was reopened in March 2018. Since May 2019, the museum has also managed the Pavillon Le Corbusier on behalf of the City of Zurich as a public museum.