London Design Festival

Design Stories from the Capital

For many, London is the cultural centre for design. With its abundance of museums and creatives splashed across the city, it is no surprise a festival exists to celebrate its creative activity.

London Design Festival, which runs annually, is a melting pot for the country’s greatest thinkers, practitioners, retailers and educators. The event aims to showcase design’s multiple facets and applications.

We will wind our way through the key design stories presented at this year’s festival, spotlighting the importance of design across the disciplines of art and architecture.

Green Cities

Urban planning and design decisions affect urbanites lives in many ways. ‘Vert’, a landmark project from this years’ festival, brings a welcome infusion of greenery to the Parade Ground at Chelsea College of Arts. The structure, comprised of a series of triangular timber sails, is intended to remove carbon from the atmosphere, offer cooling shade, and bring fresh energy to a cherished patch of public space. Although only in situ for a short window, the installation is an example of how thoughtful design can enhance our interaction with the built environment.

‘Restorative urbanism’, as design concept, places the mental health, wellness, and quality of life of citizens at the forefront of city planning and urban design. The restorative city explores how street features, for example, contribute to the restorative city by allowing people to fully access and participate in the public realm. By making streets “interesting places that arouse curiosity”, this type of design has the potential to increase neighbourliness, belongingness, and inclusivity through community participation and appreciation of natural features.

Surrealist Furniture

The Sanderson Hotel in London is renowned for its’ unique and stunning design. Originally the HQ and showroom for Sanderson Textiles, the hotel now features an original, surrealist 1970s red lips sofa by Edra, just one of the carefully curated design pieces introduced by Philippe Starck.

Described by the general manager as being transported to a “dream-like world”, the hotel’s eclectic nature reveals how creativity can be found in ordinary, everyday life.

For the Surrealists, furniture items, as ‘supremely domesticated functional objects’, are an example of the practical colliding with the imaginative. This chapter on Surrealist furniture explores surrealism and its everyday contexts with examples such as Dalí’s signature Mae West Lips sofa.

Sensory Art

‘Duo’ by artist and Designer Melek Zeynep Bulut, is an ambitious combination of visual art and architectural design which turns those who observe it into active participants.

Situated in the Painted Hall at Greenwich’s Old Royal Naval College, the installation uses a system of magnets, sensors, perception-altering surfaces, and acoustic reflectors which are altered by a visitor’s presence. As such, Duo acts as a sensor which perceives and responds to stimuli, much like a living form.

In Senses: Perceptions, Vibrations, Visions design scholar, critic, and curator, Susan Yelavich, frames design as process and a means of making the world knowable through appeals to our senses. The gap between our sensory experiences and the process of ‘making sense’ of that information is challenged, exposing how our assumptions have implications for the world of design.

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Image credit: DANIEL LEAL via Getty Images