The London Design Festival (LDF), the city’s annual platform for emerging and established designers, is currently underway and celebrating its 15th anniversary of promoting London’s global influence on design and architecture. The festival, which runs through Sept. 24, hosts a series of exhibitions, installations, trade festivals, and seminars, totaling 427 events across the city. “The London Design Festival is a fantastic event which brings together designers from across the globe and underlines London’s position as a cultural powerhouse,” said London Mayor Sadiq Khan in an LDF press release.
Several highlights of the festival can be found at the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A), including Reflection Room, an immersive experience of colored lights by Australian lighting artist Flynn Talbot; Transmission, an undulating, interactive 21.3-meter-long sculpture constructed from Alcantara, a pliable and sound-absorbent material, by Welsh designer Ross Lovegrove; and While We Wait, a lattice-like Palestinian-stone installation by Bethlehem, Palestine-based architects Elias and Yousef Anastas.
Apart from the V&A, the festival's Landmark Projects Urban Cabin and Villa Walala can be found at the Oxo Tower Wharf Courtyard and Exchange Square in Broadgate, respectively. Urban Cabin, by Mini Living and London-based Sam Jacob Studio, is a microhouse that explores the creative use of space and innovative design, and is designed as a research space for urban needs and local identities of London. Villa Walala is an immersive, inflatable installation by textile designer Camille Walala that uses bold shapes and colors to introduce a sense of the unexpected to the environment.
Images of these highlights can be found below.