Design Research (store)

Design Research or D/R was an innovative retail store founded in 1953 by Ben Thompson in Cambridge, Massachusetts; in the 1970s, under subsequent ownership, it became a chain of a dozen stores across the United States; it went bankrupt in 1978. Thompson's goal was to provide "a place where people could buy everything they needed for contemporary living", notably modern European furnishings and in particular Scandinavian design.

D/R has continued to have an outsized reputation: in 2000, a survey of influential design stores named D/R as number one, though it had been closed for 22 years. It influenced later retailers like Crate & Barrel and Design Within Reach.

Design Research carried an eclectic selection of products, from furniture to clothing, from toys to pots and pans, at a wide range of prices, introducing the idea of a lifestyle store. It carried furnishings by such designers as Marcel Breuer, Hans Wegner, Alvar Aalto, and Joe Colombo.

Design Research was the exclusive U.S. representative for the Finnish clothing and textiles of Marimekko from 1959 to 1976.Jacqueline Kennedy was pictured on the cover of Sports Illustrated in 1960 in a Marimekko sundress purchased at D/R.

The original Harvard Square Design Research store was in a 19th-century wood frame mansard house on Brattle Street, Cambridge. D/R later added stores in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, Lexington Avenue (1961) and East 57th Street (1964) in New York City, and Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco (1965).

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