Red Dot Design Museum

The best product designs, from an inventive USB flash drive to a multifunctional stove to a hanging helicopter, span five floors. Every year, design experts from all over the world decide which products will be on display. They make up the jury for one of the world’s most important product competitions—the Red Dot Award: Product Design. In the course of long sessions, they test and discuss the products, assess their innovative design quality on the basis of different criteria depending on their task and purpose, and ultimately decide which have earned the “Red Dot” seal of quality and thus a place in the museum.

The museum and its inspiring atmosphere is housed in the former Boiler House of the Zollverein Coal Mine. Built between 1928 and 1929, it served as the power house for the complex, which was abandoned in 1986. Today, the impressive architecture had to be converted to suit its new function. Red Dot founder, Dr. Peter Zec, suggested that Lord Norman Foster should set the new direction of the architectonical characteristics. With his distinctive, yet gentle reconstruction, the British architect created a concise style for the entire coal mine.