Summer, a desire for lightness. With this in mind, the Design Museum addresses a holiday theme – the design of the surfboard. From the past (indigenous Hawaiian traditions) to the future.

The designers themselves have been invited to reveal the secrets, the ‘shapers’. Athletes and acrobats of the waves but at the same time designers, engineers and artisans who, through patient work with hydrodynamics, the flexibility of flippers (inspired by those of dolphins), using increasingly lightweight materials and advanced technology, have revolutionised this sport, making it one of the most popular in the world.

Australians Bob McTavish and Wayne Lynch for example, or Californian surfing legend Dick Brewer and eccentric genius George Greenough, from Santa Barbara and guru of surf cinema.

With film, photography, sketches and around ten different boards, the collection describes how these champions have brought about new ways to take on the ocean waves and made the surfboard into the perfect fusion between form and function. E.S.

London – Great Britain
Shape and Shapers. The evolution of the surfboard
2.7.2005 – 9.10.2005
Design Museum, Shad Thames
T +44-0870-8339955
https://www.designmuseum.org