Our London Design Festival 2022 whistle-stop tour
Kicking off our tour, we visited designer Sabine Marcelis’s installation – called Swivel – in St Giles Square, located beside one of the city's central underground stations, Tottenham Court Road. The Dutch designer is showcased several rotating chairs made with solid stone from Dutch material brand SolidNature, encouraging visitors to interact with each other. The artist’s aim was to add liveliness to an otherwise nondescript area and inject some fun into the daily routine of the many people who pass through the busy square each day.
Our second highlight from this year's London Design Festival is the Jelly Salad rug from Bethan Laura Wood, exhibited at Christopher Farr’s design studio space in East London.
Continuing Bethan's exploration of food presentation and representation, 'Jelly Salad' is a joyous gathering of abstracted vegetables suspended in a jelly sea, immortalised in the form of a Christopher Farr Editions rug. The varying heights and textures are developed by cutting looped strips of fabric, a craft-based rug hooking technique.
The USA has a tradition of 'Jell-o creations' that reflect the economy, industrialisation, and the development of 'domestic science' over the 20th century. Dyed and puréed foodstuffs were piped, preened, around wobbling cast blocks of vibrating coloured jelly and transformed into their most futuristic versions.
Next up on our London Design Festival not-to-be missed list, is Neolithic stone inspired structure, Henge. Located in the heart of Canary Wharf, Henge is seen as a participatory sculpture that invites those who work, live and visit this culturally diverse area to engage with it creatively.
The pavilion is made of 150 million year old Jurassic limestone, a zero carbon, recyclable material. Henge will be in situ at Wren Landing, Canary Wharf until 20 October 2022.
Henge is an LSI Stone, Stanton Williams and Webb Yates Engineers initiative in collaboration with Experimentadesign and London Design Festival, with support from SEAM Design in collaboration with Lightprojects and hosted by Canary Wharf Group at Wren Landing.
The fourth must-see is London Green Wood’s live demonstrations of a man-powered pole lathe.
Woodworker Dave Evers is journeying with pole lathe in tow, from SCP to Spitalfields market and back to his workshop at Hackney City Farm, demonstrating bowl turning. Bowls and plates turned by foot on said lathe are available to buy after watching this greenwood working masterclass.
London Green Wood is a not-for-profit cooperative and a community of green woodworkers based at Hackney City Farm. Their aim is to encourage crafty-ness, creativity and self-reliance in everybody. From their outdoor woodland workshop, using locally felled wood, they bring heritage crafts to the heart of the city and make basic woodcraft skills available to all. All demonstrations use hand tools and green wood straight from the log.
Our final review from this years London Design Festival is Sony’s life-sized media platform installation INTO SIGHT. Sony Design experiments with sensorial effects that transform simple boundary surfaces into an infinite panorama through shifting light, colour and sound.
Stepping into the installation unleashes a unique response; as you venture further inside you will become more aware of unexpected visual and audio dimensions that continuously evolve through your interactions. This project aimed to capture and discover new insights regarding the coexistence of physical and meta realities. INTO SIGHT was exhibited in the Pavilion Gallery at Cromwell Place, London.
