The Dinner Party / True-to-Life Design

In galleries and museums, design objects are frequently displayed on pedestals or in glass vitrines but rarely in something resembling the everyday living environment for which they were conceived. In the context of London Design Festival, Scholten & Baijings have turned things around for a change. Or, rather, inside out. Because for nine days Scholten & Baijings have transformed The Norfolk House Music Room in the British Galleries in the V&A Museum into a completely dinner setting in a lived-in home.

Objective
The objective of the presentation is to let people see things in a different way. More adventurously, because many designs are only discovered at a second glance. More objectively, because there are no nameplates, so that the boundaries between exclusive design and mass products become blurred and prejudices disappear.

‘The visitor enters just seconds after the guests have left to smoke a cigaret in the garden. One can use this unguarded moment to look at the luxurious dinner table and the interior undisturbedly. The music is playing softly…’