His wine racks (above left) for Magis in Italy are the ultimate designer accessory. When Italian furniture maestro Vico Magistretti was asked for the best designed British product, he chose the London Underground map (above right). It conveys information succinctly to foreigners to make policemen redundant. It was designed in 1916 by Edward JohnstonThe designer of this archipelago of a vase (above) is Finnish and so famous that his head is on the bank note Alvar Aalto’s vase is still made by Ittala. Every schoolboy’s dream Christmas present, the Swiss army knife was designed by Carl and Victoria Eisener in 1891. The Sony Walkman was conceived by Sony chairman Akio Morita while playing tennis. Then he explained that he often walked about at home in high heeled shoes because “they’re brilliant for your calves” and they laughed.

He didn’t mention the tightsThe Anglepoise lamp (top right) was designed by George Cawardine in 1932 for the Herbert Terry company Sniffin’ Glue was one of the first fanzines, and the best known, to emerge in the 1970s and challenged the idea that design was the sole property of qualified designers. The Design Museum is at Shad Thames, London SE1 (0171-403 6933 for times)
Helmut Newton annoyed the students at the Glasgow School of Art when he showed them his photographic campaign for Wolford tights (right). Nonie Niesewand

20th Century Design, Carlton Books, pounds 25. But it’s a look at 360 examples of the best and most enduring examples of modern design, placing each in its historical context And that makes it an entertaining story of our times. So now that we have an entire museum dedicated to it, what do you put into it? Not everything in the Design Museum’s book Twentieth Century Design by Catherine McDermott, from which the items on this and the following page are taken, is in the museum. From one side of the house to the other, through glass doors and huge windows, other rooms are visible, like a careful sequence of minimalist stage sets. The frosted facade glows pinkly, due to the Matisse-coloured wall behind it, looking excitingly odd from the street.
Ron Arad, his wife and two children have the basement, ground floor and garden of an Edwardian house in Belsize Park, north London.

Its comfortable interior appears a million miles away from Arad’s signature creations in cast iron and raw steel. The tough features that Arad brought to his clients’ homes have given way in the 1990s to smoother more sophisticated products.In his “English dream” of a home, the Israeli-born designer has done surprisingly little in the way of interior architecture: “Living spaces are already perfectly defined… the Victorians and Edwardians invented all that, and it is never questioned… It’s so classically good, the way that it is, that it was not worth transforming.” He knocked the ground floor into one large room and, as he has a deep-rooted aversion to curtains and all forms of blinds, he has installed sanded glass in the windows that face the road, “translucent rather than transparent”. This is the only high-tech touch about the place – even the cornices have been left untouched.