The Walker Art Center’s Design House 3 is now open, bringing handmade design and furnishings directly to the public. It is the only gallery/store in an American museum where visitors can touch one-of-a-kind chairs, lamps, tables, and fabrics—and have conversations with staff who share stories about their makers.
Idea House 3 is a bold retail innovation that recalls an early modernist vision for popular access to thoughtful design. The concept grew out of a cross-disciplinary partnership between Asli Altay, head of design, content, and communications at the Walker, and Felice Clark, the museum’s director of business development.
The Walker (the largest of the art centers) invited Defenbacher to stay on as its first director in 1939. Knowing that many New Deal programs were soon to end, he saw a new role for the institution as a purveyor of modern design in everything from residential architecture to furniture, lighting, painting, and fabrics. So, Defenbacher founded the Everyday Art Gallery inside the museum to display modern, American-made home furnishings and products. Visitors could actually sit in an Eames chair next to a telephone and directly call the local department stores or vendors who sold a product in the gallery.
The Walker also launched the Everyday Art Quarterly to diffuse the idea of simple, quality design nationwide. Then the Walker started building. Idea House 3 gets its name from the two full-scale Idea Houses that the Walker constructed on the campus from 1941 to 1947. Everyday design infused the optimism of the postwar age. It’s no surprise that Case Study Houses, sponsored by Arts & Architecture, also arose at this time.
Read more about Design House 3 on aninteriormag.com.