With summer now seemingly behind us, it’s time to look ahead to the new season. Call us sentimental but September always seems to bring that back-to-school feeling. A fresh start, a new focus and a revived sense of creativity to concentrate on exciting projects. It’s also a time when London truly comes alive to celebrate and educate the world over of the very best in design. Cue London Design Festival 2022 which marks the festival’s 20th anniversary and is already causing ripples of excitement all across town. With our design journals ready and satchels packed, come join House of Kip for what’s looking to be one of its best festivals yet.
Kicking off on the 17th September, this year’s festival promises a unmissable programme of events, installations and exhibitions. A platform for designers and creatives to showcase their work, the festival highlights the diversity and talent found in both London and the UK. It also does a pretty fine job of affirming London as the design capital of the world. With climate change, resource depletion and pollution an ever-increasing cause for concern, this year’s festival will seek to platform new thinking and creative concepts to demonstrate the vital role of design today in achieving a more circular and sustainable economy.
Guaranteed to pique interest early, this year’s Landmark Projects will see Rotterdam-based designer Sabine Marcelis create an outdoor installation in central London. The project will invite the public to gather and celebrate the Brutalist form of Centre Point, and London’s wider multi-faceted architecture.
Towards South Kensington, Sony Design will present INTO SIGHT at Cromwell Place. Visitors will be presented with a an immersive life-sized media platform. Playing sensorial effects that seek to transform simple boundary surfaces into an infinite vista, unique responses will be unleashed through shifting light, colour and sound. The project aims to capture and discover new insights regarding the coexistence of physical and meta realities.
Nearby, a unique collaboration awaits between the London Design Festival and the V&A, the world’s leading museum of art, design and performance. Now entering the 13th year together as the official Festival Hub, iconic spaces within the museum will be transformed by a vibrant series of specially-commissioned installations and displays by international contemporary designers. This year’s theme is the idea of transformation: the transformation of molecules and materials, the creative renewal of household objects, the regeneration of the planet itself, and much more.
Projects include R for Repair led by the Design Singapore Council and the National Design Centre (Singapore) where broken household objects, often with sentimental attachment, are handed over to designers to be not just repaired, but creatively renewed.
Plasticity, designed by Niccolo Casas, will present a monumental 3D-printed structure by Nagami. Fabricated with Ocean Plastic®, a marine plastic waste intercepted by the collaboration network Parley for the Oceans, the project explores the possibility of turning a harmful waste material into new uses, while highlighting the work of the organisation in cleaning up the world’s beaches, islands and coastal communities.
Furthermore, The Lebanese House is an installation that explores the notion of saving a home and a city as part of the reconstruction of Beirut after the city’s 2020 exploration. Originally designed as part of the London Festival of Architecture by Annabel Karim Kassar, the installation has been further transformed for the London Design Festival with new design elements.
This year’s festival commission will see LSI Stone work with Stanton Williams and Webb Yates in collaboration with experimentaldesign to present Henge, a project inspired by Neolithic stone structure and constructed of 150-million year old Jurassic limestone and marble that is a zero carbon and recyclable material. Located in Canary Wharf, it is designed as a gathering space with a circular, sculptural form invites those who live, work and visit the area to engage with it creatively, achieve relaxation and contemplation, facilitated with music and sound design.
Back again and fiercer than ever, design enthusiasts can look forward to 12 participating Design Districts this year. Different pockets of London showcase their unique design personality in reflection of the local community to enable visitors to explore events and wander design hotspots. All within a short walking distance of each other and some within excellent proximity to House of Kip’s homes, notable Design Districts include Brompton Design District, Mayfair Design District, Pimlico Design District, and many more.
A night to certainly mark in diaries is Thursday 22 September when shops and studios within the Brompton Design District across the South Kensington, Knightsbridge, Chelsea and Brompton Cross area host a special late-night event. Look forward to The Conran Shop’s collaboration with It’s Nice That to present an immersive installation that will see the digital and physical collide in a playful exploration of design’s role in this intriguing new world. Molteni&C will host a multimedia installation by Vincent Van Duysen plus some of the most iconic pieces from their latest 2022 collections. Modern furniture designers Poltrona Frau will present their True Evolution 2022 collection that embraces the concept of ‘true evolution’, embodying the essence of the company as it celebrates its 110th anniversary. Other brands participating include Giorgetti, the Design Museum, Poliform and many, many more.
This year will also see the special release of LDF 20 Years – a limited-edition collector’s book chronicling the last two decades of storytelling through the lens of design. A definite keeper for the coffee table collection.
With less than a few weeks to showtime, we’ll catch you there!
London Design Festival 2022 runs 17 – 25 September 2022 across London
londondesignfestival.com
