In the 1960s Yves Saint Laurent made an indelible mark on fashion with clothing emblematic of the new modernity. Yves Saint Laurent, organized by FAMSF and The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in collaboration with the Fondation Pierre Bergé-Yves Saint Laurent, explores the designs that made Saint Laurent famous, and his inspirations drawn from art, theatre, history, literature, and nature. This exhibition contains nearly 130 accessorized garments and sketches illustrating the lines, colors, and fundamentals of Saint Laurent’s work.

Second Lives: Remixing the Ordinary is the inaugural exhibition at the Museum of Arts and Design in the new building at 2 Columbus Circle, which opened in September 2008. The exhibition features work by 50 international established and emerging artists from all five continents who create objects and installations comprised of ordinary and everyday manufactured articles, most originally made for another functional purpose. 

The world of Japanese car design set against the backdrop of Japan’s unique culture is explored in a sophisticated new exhibition at the Science Museum, from 29 November 2008. Japan Car, an exploration of the car as a "mobile cell", has been conceived by two world class names from outside the world of automobile: Kenya Hara, the man responsible for much of the success of Muji, and Shigeru Ban, the distinguished Japanese architect currently designing a new satellite gallery in Metz for Paris’ Pompidou Centre.

This exhibition at the Design Museum London is the first comprehensive presentation of Hussein Chalayan’s work in the UK. Spanning fifteen years of experimental projects, the exhibition explores Hussein Chalayan's creative approach, his inspirations and the many themes which influence his work such as cultural identity, displacement and migration.

In the design gallery Kunsthal Rotterdam presents the installation Icon Dressed by the Danish-Dutch artist Annette Meyer, a poetic recreation of fourteen silhouettes based on female fashion from the past two centuries.

Among the leading architectural studios in Europe, Berlin-based J. Mayer H. stands out for its commitment to a high level of formal and conceptual research. Central to its experimental approach is a deep engagement with a ubiquitous yet often ignored image type: data protection patterns, such as those you might find lining the inside of bank envelopes. These patterns, which serve to conceal other information, form a fertile terrain of investigation for J. Mayer H. as the studio translates them across various media and scales. With this exhibition, SFMOMA explores a new way of presenting architecture in a gallery setting by joining images of built projects with an experiential installation that combines supergraphics, sound, and video.

The world’s most interesting and forward looking designs have been nominated for Brit Insurance Design Award by industry experts spanning seven categories: Architecture, Fashion, Furniture, Graphics, Interactive, Product and Transport.

The exhibition Design for the Other 90% features more than 30 projects that reflect a growing movement among designers, engineers, and social entrepreneurs to create low-cost solutions for everyday problems. Through local and global partnerships, individuals and organizations are finding unique ways to address the basic challenges of survival and progress faced by the world’s poor.

The work of Le Corbusier remains highly significant and relevant in today's architectural discourse. Yet during the past two decades, no major museum show has addressed the many aspects that still make Le Corbusier's work such an important point of reference for contemporary architecture and urbanism. To fill this void, the Vitra Design Museum is now joining forces with the Netherlands Architecture Institute and the Royal Institute of British Architects in the production of an international retrospective.

This exhibition in the Porter Gallery will display more than 300 hats chosen with the expert eye of a milliner. On display will be hats ranging from an Egyptian Anubis mask dating from 600BC to a 1950s Balenciaga hat and couture creations by Jones and his contemporaries. To show the universal appeal and delight of wearing hats, Jones has included a wide variety of styles including top hats, berets and a child’s plastic tiara.

In 2008, the American designer George Nelson (1908-1986) would have been 100 years old. In recognition of this centennial anniversary, the Vitra Design Museum is planning the first comprehensive retrospective on his work.

The Gallery of the New York School of Interior Design is pleased to present A View from the Inside: NYSID Alumni Exhibition, on view from March 5 through April 25, 2009.

This exhibition brings together the designs of twenty alumni of the college, hailing from China, Israel, Peru, South Africa, and the United States and represents longtime graduates who are well established in their field as well as recent graduates who are up-and-coming talents. Their designs—represented by photographs, renderings, digital displays, and free-standing prototypes—are for a range of residential and commercial projects, including private residences, offices, hotels, restaurants, and retail centers.

This exhibition is the first critical survey of contemporary Western European decorative and industrial design, organized by IMA Design Curator R. Craig Miller. The exhibition and accompanying catalogue present 250 seminal works including furniture, ceramics, metalwork, glass and product design that reveal the extraordinary creativity of two generations of designers in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Portugal, Scandinavia, Spain and the United Kingdom.

From March 2009 on, the Imperial Furniture Collection is showcasing the comprehensive and systematic exhibition on the furniture and architecture of the french designer Jean Prouvé (1901 - 1984) in cooperation with the Vitra Design Museum in Germany.

The Pictopia exhibition will playfully explore the phenomenon of contemporary character design and art. Graphic designers, artists, animators, media and 3D designers work with a shared set of signs, opening up new contexts and correlations. The exhibition examines the contemporary vague of reduced figuration as a strategy for producing a vitalism outside established narratives. These so-called characters are reduced to the anthropomorphic function of eye contact which seems to look out from flat pictorial space at the viewer.

The exhibition is dedicated to Henry van de Velde’s book art (1863-1957). Henry van de Velde is primarily known as an architect, but in keeping with the spirit of the times he lived in he was also a versatile designer: he designed carpets, furniture, silver objects and ceramics. But he was also a gifted book designer.

Resolving the vital role of packaging with its impact on our world is at the heart of this important new exhibition at London's Museum of Brands, Packaging and Advertising. Drawing on the museum's extensive collection, the exhibition explains the importance of packaging, how it has developed over the years, the serious challenges it now presents, and how manufacturers, retailers and designers are working together to adopt a more environmentally friendly approach.

Televisions that retract into the ceiling, pivoting walls with a built-in mini-bar, underground ‘nuclear cities’ – the works of Italian designer Joe Colombo could have emerged from the set of a contemporary James Bond film. They exude the spirit of the shrill Sixties yet also impress with their functionality and striking forms. One of the most successful designers of his time, Colombo produced design classics such as the Elda armchair, the Universale chair or the lamp Alogena. In 1971, he died at 41 years of age. The exhibition Joe Colombo – Inventing the Future is the first international retrospective dedicated to Colombo’s work.

Is everything design today? The Museum für Gestaltung Zürich is looking into this question with the presentation of its collection, which has never been previously exhibited to this extent. The whole spectrum of the museum's internationally important Applied Art, Graphics, Poster and Design Collection will be on show in a scenography by the renowned Swiss design studio Atelier Oï.

In this exhibition, several works created over half a century by legendary outdoor furniture designer Richard Schultz are being presented on the Perelman Building's outdoor Café Terrace.

Timothy Taylor Gallery announced an exhibition of new works by Ron Arad. This marks the first show at the gallery since it announced sole representation of Arad in the UK.

Grouped around a freestanding star of interconnected walls designed by Arad, the show will unveil a number of highly sophisticated experimental pieces, many only recently produced and on display for the first time.