A contemporary design auction hosted by Phillips as part of the development of the new Design Museum has raised over £1.1 million towards construction costs of its new building.
The museum which is moving to its new home in the former Commonwealth Institute on Kensington High Street, will open to the public on the 24th November.
For this auction, the Design Museum received works donated to the auction by leading design figures such as Stella McCartney, Jonathan Ive and Thomas Heatherwick. There was also donations from Alessandro Mendini, Mario Bellini and Antonio Citterio from Italy, the Campana Brothers from Brazil and Nendo from Japan.
A total of 55 pieces were sold at the live and online auctions. Sir Antony Gormley’s piece Small Spall III sculpture achieved the highest bid of the evening selling for £158,500. Meanwhile, Ingrid Donat’s Biblotheque Quatre Saisons sold for £117,700 an auction record for the designer, and the Solar Clock by renowned architect David Adjaye for £110,500.
Other stand out pieces from the auction included a set of three marble tables designed by Dame Zaha Hadid and donated by the Zaha Hadid Foundation shortly before her death and Jonathan Ive and his team at Apple designed a one-off iPad for the event, selling for £50,000 and a tea set by his Apple design collaborator, Marc Newson, reached £80,500.
Deyan Sudjic, Director of the Design Museum said: “We are hugely grateful to Phillips for their support; they have been a great partner for the new Design Museum fundraising campaign. The Design Museum is also fortunate to have had the support of so many of the world’s leading designers, architects, artists, collectors and gallerists in making a huge contribution towards the success of the fundraising campaign to open its new home in Kensington in November.”
After raising more than expected at the auction, the Design Museum just needs to raise roughly £2 million before doors open to the public in November and a further £7 million to create necessary reserves to safeguard the future of the Design Museum.
The new museum will open on the 24th November and will be devoted entirely to contemporary design and architecture. Its new home will give the museum three times more space than at its current location at Shad Thames.
For the first time in the museum’s history, there will be a free gallery that presents a contemporary vision of the designed world using the museum’s collection. It will contain three galleries and state of the art learning and event spaces.