Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna

Listen to the traffic on the Ring for a moment. Trams grind past, and a cyclist rings a bell. Then look up at the facade in front of you. It is warm red brick, laid in neat courses, with pale stone around the windows. Painted panels and ceramic medallions run below the roofline. This building feels like it belongs in a north Italian city, not on a grand Viennese boulevard. That contrast is the first clue to what happens inside.

You are standing at the Museum of Applied Arts, known in Vienna simply as the MAK. Its full German name translates to the Austrian Museum of Applied Arts and Contemporary Art. The idea behind it is simple and quite radical. Beauty does not live only in paintings and marble statues. It also lives in a chair, a teacup, a carpet, a door handle. This museum treats the objects of daily life as art.

The story begins in the 1860s. Vienna was changing fast. The old city walls had come down, and the Ringstrasse was rising in their place. This is the wide boulevard that circles the old town. At the same time, the Habsburg empire worried about its factories and workshops. Could Austrian goods compete with those from Britain and France? The answer, its founders believed, was education. Show makers and the public the finest examples of design, and taste would improve.

The model came from London. There, a museum at South Kensington had opened to raise standards in manufacturing. That institution later became the Victoria and Albert Museum. Vienna followed its example, and this museum became the first of its kind on the European continent. So when you walk inside, you are entering one of the oldest design museums in the world. Many visitors walk past it on the Ring without knowing that.

The building itself was designed by Heinrich von Ferstel. He was one of the leading architects of the Ringstrasse era. He also designed the Votive Church and the main building of the University of Vienna. Here, he chose the style of the Italian Renaissance. The building opened in the early 1870s. Next door, a school for applied arts was added soon after. That school still exists today as the University of Applied Arts. Museum and school were meant to work together, side by side.

Step through the doors and the noise of the street falls away. The central hall rises around you, framed by columns and arcades on two levels. Light comes down from above. The space feels calm and open, almost like an Italian courtyard brought indoors. Take a moment here before you choose a direction. This hall often hosts events and large installations, so what you see may change from visit to visit.

Now comes a surprise. In the early 1990s, the museum invited contemporary artists to redesign the rooms of its permanent collection. Each artist took one part of the collection and shaped how it is shown. So you are not just looking at historic objects. You are also looking at how one artist chose to stage them. Some rooms feel quiet and spare. Others are bold and theatrical. Notice how the lighting and the walls change from room to room.

One of the best-loved displays tells the story of the bentwood chair. In the nineteenth century, the Thonet company found a way to bend solid beech with steam. The result was light, strong furniture that could be shipped in pieces and built anywhere. The famous Viennese café chair grew out of this method. Look at the shapes on display, and you may recognise chairs you have sat on in cafés around the world.

Then there is Vienna around 1900, a time of great artistic energy. In 1903, the architect Josef Hoffmann and the designer Koloman Moser helped found the Wiener Werkstätte, or Vienna Workshops. Their goal was to design everything with the same care, from a building down to a spoon. The museum holds one of the most important collections of their work. Look for the clean geometry, the black and white squares, and the fine silver.

Here is a detail many visitors miss. The museum holds Gustav Klimt's working designs for the Stoclet Frieze. This was a large mosaic he created for a private mansion in Brussels. The finished frieze stays in that house, and the public rarely sees it. But here you can study the designs themselves, with their golden spirals and stylised trees. It is one of the best chances to see this side of Klimt's work up close.

The collections reach far beyond Vienna. You will find carpets from Persia and the wider Islamic world, porcelain, glass, textiles, and a strong collection from East Asia. Japanese objects played a special role here. Around 1900, Viennese designers looked closely at Japanese art, and it shaped their style. So as you move between rooms, watch for echoes. A pattern on a Japanese textile may reappear in a Viennese poster or a piece of jewellery.

The museum also looks forward, not only back. Its name includes contemporary art, and it hosts changing exhibitions on design, architecture, and the future of how we live. The museum's reach also extends beyond this building. It manages a concrete anti-aircraft tower from the Second World War in a Vienna park, and it runs a centre for art and architecture in Los Angeles. A design museum born in the age of the emperor still asks questions about tomorrow.

Before you leave, step back outside and cross toward the Stadtpark, the city park just opposite. Turn around and look at the red brick facade again. You have seen the chairs, the silver, the golden spirals of Klimt. Now look at the street around you. The tram, the benches, the lamps... each of them was designed by someone. That is the quiet lesson of this place. Once you notice it, you start to see design everywhere you walk.