Brussels, December 2015.

The museum began with one collector and a skip. Franceinfo’s Culturebox, in a report published on 11 February 2016, said the story starts in 1987, when the Brussels collector Philippe Decelle found chairs by Joe Colombo thrown out as rubbish. From then on, the report said, Decelle made it his task to keep a memory of design, combing flea markets, second-hand fairs and attic sales for objects in plastic. Culturebox described the collection and framed its core between 1960, and 1973, the year of the oil shock. English Wikipedia says the collection, known as the Plasticarium, was shown for years across three floors of Decelle’s own house in central Brussels.

The collection then found an institutional home. Wikipedia says that in December 2015 the Atomium acquired the Plasticarium and opened a museum in the Trade Mart building next to it on the Heysel plateau, and it gives 11 December 2015 as the museum’s founding date. The name chosen was Art & Design Atomium Museum, shortened to ADAM; in press coverage and on its own material the museum also went by Design Museum Brussels (ADAM). Speaking to the Belga news agency in a report that La Libre published on 29 September 2020, the museum’s director Arnaud Bozzini described ADAM as a “poetic acronym” that announced the programme: a museum of art and design on the Heysel plateau, carried by the Atomium, which had bought a private collection to show there. He said that setting up a museum outside the Brussels pentagon, the historic centre of the city, had been an ambitious step in itself.

The space was split from the start. Culturebox reported in 2016 that ADAM offered exhibition space, part of it given to the Plasticarium, and Wikipedia describes the rest as space for temporary exhibitions. The report singled out objects from across the world: an isolation sphere made in 1971 by the architect Maurice-Claude Vidili, tooth-shaped chairs by Castle, an elephant armchair by Rancillac and a chair by Shiro Kuramata set with silk roses. It listed César, Verner Panton and Eero Aarnio among the names on show, alongside contemporary designers such as Philippe Starck and Charles Kaisin. Wikipedia’s list of names in the collection adds Anna Castelli Ferrieri, Gaetano Pesce, Studio 65 and Roger Tallon, among others.

Film-set photographs, punk graphics and a Plasticotek.

The museum’s rooms were planned to let the objects do the talking. On its own website, the museum says its architecture was conceived and carried out by Lhoas & Lhoas Architectes, working with the museographer Thierry Belenger, a specialist in twentieth-century design, and the design theorist and historian Alexandra Midal. The museum says the project followed ten principles, among them making use of the existing building inside and out, organising functions around existing structures, a simple and adaptable exhibition system, storage built into the display, and standard simple materials chosen so that the colourful collection stands out. It says the furniture in the museum comes from Vitra and the lighting from Delta Light.

Midal also shaped the early exhibition programme. Wallpaper* reported on 11 March 2016 that she had curated “Eames & Hollywood” at the Art & Design Atomium Museum, a show of previously unpublished photographs from a series called Movie Sets. The magazine said Charles Eames had put the series into a montage sequence for a lecture in 1971, and that the pictures were taken between 1951 and 1970 on the film sets of his friend, the director Billy Wilder. They showed technicians on scaffolds, lighting rigs and cameras more than stars. Wallpaper* said the photographs were displayed backlit along two long walls, set into a timber scenography designed by Adrien Rovero, and that the show was organised with the support of the Eames Foundation and ran until 4 September that year.

Later shows kept a graphic edge. RTBF, in a review dated 2 January 2020 that used the name Design Museum Brussels (ADAM), described a visit after the exhibition “Punk Graphics – Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Die” and then walked through the permanent Plasticarium display. It named pieces including the Universale chair by Joe Colombo, the Componibili, the Portavia by Roger Tallon and the Valentine typewriter by Ettore Sottsass and Perry King. The broadcaster said the display argued that design in plastic grew out of a social project to bring well-made everyday objects to many people at an accessible price, which is why plastic became the favoured material.

RTBF also described how the visit ended. The route led into a space called the Plasticotek, which the broadcaster said explained the technical and scientific side of the plastics on show, including the point that some plastics are of natural origin. It placed the museum on the Place de Belgique, practically opposite the Atomium.

Steel spheres outside, moulded colour inside.

Museums and print shops carry identities that rarely stop at a logo. For many institutions the building itself becomes the mark: a façade, a roofline or an unusual material is the image that photographers, visitors and the press repeat, and an architect’s drawing can end up on more surfaces than any wordmark. A new wing or a move to a new address can change how a place is pictured for years.

Posters are a second, older surface. A steady programme of exhibition or event posters, held together by a grid, a typeface or a printing method, can describe a place more clearly than its symbol, and over time the archive of those posters becomes a collection in its own right.

Typefaces and signage carry the identity inside: wayfinding, wall texts and labels repeat the same letters a visitor meets on the website and the ticket. Shops, editions and printed souvenirs extend the system again, turning a postcard, a print or a tote bag into a small portable version of the brand. When reading these guides, look at the building, the posters, the type and the shop together; they usually tell one story.

A new name, October 2020.

Five years after opening, the museum changed its name. La Libre, carrying a Belga report on 29 September 2020, said ADAM was taking the name Design Museum Brussels and had announced two new exhibitions, one temporary and one permanent, opening that Friday. Wikipedia dates the change to 2 October 2020. Bozzini told Belga that the new name reflected how the museum had developed since its launch in 2015: exhibitions had quickly concentrated on creation in design, in its historical, cultural and sociological dimensions. RTBF, publishing the same news on 30 September 2020, quoted him as saying the name was a clear statement of the museum’s identity and of what it had become, the design museum of Brussels.

The collections were renamed and widened at the same time. RTBF said the museum would keep its plastic collection on permanent display under the name Plastic Design Collection, formerly the Plasticarium. The new permanent exhibition, Belgisch Design Belge, set pieces from that collection beside selections from Belgian private collections, starting with those of the King Baudouin Foundation. Both La Libre and RTBF said it would highlight wood and metal accessories designed in the 1950s by the Belgian designers Jules Wabbes, Jacques Dupuis and Léon Stynen. The bilingual title, in Dutch and French, is how the museum continues to present the display.

The reopening season also turned to the museum’s storerooms. Both reports said the temporary show (Dé)confinés would run until 15 November 2020 with about forty objects usually kept in the reserves, in a season that La Libre said was marked by the coronavirus epidemic. The rename did not change the museum’s address or its owner: Wikipedia lists the Atomium as owner, and the museum’s own website, read in October 2026, describes Design Museum Brussels as a project initiated and developed by the Atomium and dedicated to design from the twentieth century to the present. The museum says its Plastic Design Collection, on show since 2015, traces the use of plastic in design from the mid-1950s onward, and that it opened Belgisch Design Belge in September 2020. A notice on the same site said the Radical Design section of the Plastic Design Collection was being rearranged between 29 June and 9 July 2026.

The museum now describes design as a witness to the economic, social, cultural and technical dynamics of its time, and frames its temporary exhibitions and education programme as a place to discuss that. Its two permanent displays now sit side by side: the Plastic Design Collection that began with Decelle’s finds, and Belgisch Design Belge.

For a design guide, Design Museum Brussels (ADAM) shows how a single private collection and a change of name can define a museum as clearly as its building. Compare Design Museum Gent, another Belgian design museum, and MoMA, a museum with its own design collection. For this guide we use plastic orange, pop yellow and moulded blue against steel grey with a rounded sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Design Museum Brussels (ADAM)’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.