The Dezeen team brings you live coverage of the London Design Festival, which runs from 14 to 22 September. Read on for all our coverage from Monday 16 September.
3:00 p.m. – vandalism
Sad news from King’s Cross where the Juicy Booth is closed following an act of vandalism over the weekend. According to designer Annie Frost Nicholson, who created the installation in collaboration with K67 Berlin and The Loss Project, the sensory booth will be open to visitors again tomorrow.
2:30 p.m. – pizza time
Next stop for Jennifer Hahn: zero-waste restaurant Silo in Hackney Wick (with interiors by Nina+Co) to discover a collection of ceramics glazed from the many bottles of wine consumed by the restaurant’s customers.
Unfortunately, I don’t eat lunch at the restaurant because journalists don’t have the time or money (and the restaurant doesn’t serve food until Wednesday). So instead, I eat pizza by the canal. There are worse ways to spend a Monday!
More information about the exhibition on Dezeen soon.
2:00 p.m. – preview!
Also in east London, Dezeen co-CEO Benedict Hobson took a look at our Design You Can Feel exhibition in collaboration with Asus, which explores the properties and possibilities of Ceraluminium.
The exhibition features designers such as Fernando Laposse, Giles Miller, Natural Material Studio, Niceworkshop and Studio Further.
The exhibition at Protein Studios in Shoreditch, which opens tomorrow, runs until Sunday. Come and say hello!
1:15 – Still no sponsor?
Jennifer Hahn’s Lime Solo Bike Tour Continues…
00:45 – “Moments of flat rest”
The next stop on the bike tour is just a stone’s throw from Dezeen’s Haggerston offices. Based in the lobby of Leroy House, Indian studios Blurck and Dasein Lab have teamed up to present their first seating collection.
Named Tula after the Sanskrit word for balance, the chairs are made from reclaimed London scaffolding planks, balanced on pieces of slate salvaged from Delhi.
The result is what the studios call “kit-built moments of rest,” held together completely without screws and instead supported by an elaborate system of tension cables like those you might see on a suspension bridge.
00:15 – Planning ahead
For those of you still planning your week, we’ve rounded up the 10 key exhibitions and installations to visit during the LDF.
We are also organizing a series of talks and events over the next three days in collaboration with Buster + Punch, Molteni&C, Autex Acoustics and Ustwo, as well as a big exhibition with ASUS. There is still time to register!
11:55 – are you sitting comfortably?
A short walk from Douglas Jardim is the Chair of Virtue exhibition at One Hundred Shoreditch, which features five sculptural chairs created by UK-based makers that celebrate form and design.
Sophia Colman’s Blob chair is particularly notable.
Responding to the theme of Natural Forms, the chair reflects the components of a red blood cell among other elements of the human body.
Judging by its appearance, the Blob chair does what it promises. But whether or not it’s pleasant to sit on remains a mystery.
11:15 – crocodiles and corkscrews
Back in east London, editorial intern Douglas Jardim visited Blond Laboratory, a touring exhibition from the London design studio that opened earlier this year in Milan.
The exhibition in Shoreditch featured the work of seven designers who draw inspiration from objects that are no longer made or readily available, including a balancing lighter by French-Swiss designer Julie Richoz of Julie Richoz Studio held up by weights and a whip-turned-candelabra made from springs by Jon Marshall of Pentagram.
There are also some interesting items from the Blond Artefacts archives on display, including a rather eye-catching crocodile-shaped grater. It’s as sharp as their teeth!
11:00 a.m. – Tuscany in Mayfair
Fresh from Helsinki Design Week, design and interiors journalist Jane Englefield headed straight to Mayfair’s Fumi gallery, where Tuscan designer Francesco Perini is showing a collection of wooden furniture.
Nucelo is Perini’s first solo exhibition at the gallery, featuring organically shaped oak furniture inlaid with materials such as veined marble, smooth onyx and sturdy steel and brass.
Perini took inspiration from desert roses – natural crystal clusters that form in harsh climatic conditions (which also inspired Jean Nouvel’s National Museum of Qatar in Doha) for the collection.
All the furniture was handmade in the designer’s workshop in Tuscany
10:30 a.m. – LDF bike tour
Design Editor Jennifer Hahn is leading a one-on-one Lime bike tour this morning (sadly not sponsored… yet!) around east London, where lots of fun things are happening this year.
The first stop was Light in Motion, an exhibition of experimental lighting designs by nine emerging designers and engineers, initiated by London studio Kai Lab.
Many of the works on display play with indirect light, including Sophie Mei Birkin’s Biomaterial Submersions marécageuses, which feature harvested plant material immortalized in bio-resin, and Duncan Carter’s algorithmically optimized 10,000 Tiny Suns.
One of my personal highlights was a massive metallic flower, which casts different reflections as it robotically unfurls its petals.
It was created by Heyl & Van Dam for the Ice Melt Tour of the American psychedelic rock band Crumb, of whom I am a big fan (I recommend listening to Ghostride, which will be the soundtrack of the next leg of the bike tour).
9:30 a.m. – the morning after the weekend before…
After a busy weekend, we’re back at this year’s London Design Festival (LDF). Dezeen editor Jennifer Hahn, interiors and design journalist Jane Englefield, editorial assistant Starr Charles, social editor Clara Finnigan and editorial intern Douglas Jardim are on the ground in London to report live.
Find the latest festival news here, including a Marshmallow Laser Feast installation for Johnnie Walker. And to keep you up to date with all the festival goings-on, Dezeen Events Guide has created an LDF guide, highlighting the festival’s main events this year.
To stay up to date, follow Dezeen live: London Design Festival, which takes place from 14 to 22 September 2024. Dezeen Events Guide has created an LDF guide, highlighting the key events at the festival. Check out Dezeen Events Guide for all the latest information you need to attend the event, as well as a list of other architecture and design events happening around the world.
Find out everything that happened on opening day (September 13).
All times are London time.
The main image is by Tom Ravenscroft.
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