About

I’m Johan Deurell, a curator of design and architecture based in Basel, Switzerland. I’m originally from Stockholm, but lived in London for most of my adult life.

For me, design, material culture and the built environment are a lenses through which to contemplate social, cultural, political and technological shifts in society. In my curating, I set creative practice in dialogue with historical contexts and critical discourses, together with a cogent aesthetic sensibility.

Since March 2025, I’m a curator at the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, Germany. Prior to coming here, I was at the Zaha Hadid Foundation, London, where I oversaw their exhibition programme, curated shows such as Zaha’s Moonsoon (2023) and Younes Ben Slimane: Images de Tunisie (2024), and researched under-explored aspects of Hadid’s early work. Between 2018 and 2022, I was a curator at the Röhsska Museum of Design and Craft, Gothenburg, where I realised exhibitions like Unmaking Democratic Design (2019), Ocean Plastics (2019), Forensic Architecture (2020), Migration (2021) and Lap-See Lam (2022). Prior to this, I was a researcher for exhibitions such as Adorned Archetypes (2018) at the New Orleans Museum of Art, Uniformt (2016) at the Post Museum, Stockholm, and Plywood (2017) at the Victoria and Albert Museum. I was also the assistant curator of Utopian Bodies: Fashion Looks Forward (2015) at the Liljevalchs Konsthall, Stockholm.

In tandem with curating and research gigs, I’ve contributed to newspapers and magazines such as AnOther Magazine, Architectural Design, The Art Newspaper, Dazed & Confused, Frieze, Form Magazine, Svenska Dagbladet, 20th Century Society and Icon, to name a few. I’ve written essays for various art and design books and edited exhibition catalogues, such as Utopian Bodies and Migration. Between 2012 and 15, I was a lecturer in cultural studies and critical theory at Central Saint Martins, London, and University for the Creative Arts, Surrey. I’ve also guest lectured at Royal College of Art, London, and partaken in multiple talks and roundtables.

I hold an MA in History of Design from Royal College of Art/Victoria and Albert Museum, and a BA (Hons) in Criticism, Communication and Curation: Art and Design from Central Saint Martins. I’ve also undertaken studies in History of Art, and History of Philosophy, at Stockholm University, and Spanish at Universitat de Barcelona.

Please, get in touch with any work related requests.

Portrait: Kane Hulse

(Updated September 2025)