The Design Museum has been located in a former banana ripening factory at London’s Shad Thames, near London Bridge, since it opened in 1989. On Tuesday, the museum announced it was selling the building to Zaha Hadid Architects.The Conran Foundation own the lease on the building, and will donate profits from the sale, estimated at around £10 million, to the £80 million fund needed to move to the museum’s new location at the Commonwealth Institute in Kensington High Street, which has been empty for 10 years.Terence Conran, who heads up the Foundation and founded the museum, said in 2011, that he would contribute a further £7.5 million to its development.Although the museum will stay at Shad Thames until 2015, its new West London space will offer three times the space to show more exhibitions and house its collection.Zaha Hadid Architects, whose designs include the Olympic aquatics centre, said the practice’s acquisition of the site will “preserve its significance“.
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