Reminds me of the Copenhagen Design Museum. Full of completely useless modern-art-esque "takes" on various items (one specific highly practical item notwithstanding: a specific chair design).
"Design" means achieving an optimum in a highly multivariate requirements space: functionalities, ease of use, aesthetics[1], cost, material use, robustness, longevity of the design[2], scalability, cost to the user, cost to manufacture or provide, ease of marketing[3], etc etc. Which basically none of the exhibits actually showed.
If you focus only on the form, it's "just" art. A worthy endeavour, certainly, but it's not the same thing.
[1]: extremely variable among people so an optimum that many people agree on in this axis is very hard to reach. "Great designers" often are famous specifically for excelling here without major impairment of other requirements.
[2] can you still make it next year, next decade? Will people still want it even if you can?
[3] it can be easier to market a lesser product, say, that's cheaper, even if it's disproportionately worse for that lower price
"Design" means achieving an optimum in a highly multivariate requirements space: functionalities, ease of use, aesthetics[1], cost, material use, robustness, longevity of the design[2], scalability, cost to the user, cost to manufacture or provide, ease of marketing[3], etc etc. Which basically none of the exhibits actually showed.
If you focus only on the form, it's "just" art. A worthy endeavour, certainly, but it's not the same thing.
[1]: extremely variable among people so an optimum that many people agree on in this axis is very hard to reach. "Great designers" often are famous specifically for excelling here without major impairment of other requirements.
[2] can you still make it next year, next decade? Will people still want it even if you can?
[3] it can be easier to market a lesser product, say, that's cheaper, even if it's disproportionately worse for that lower price