The Wonderful Installations at London Design Festival 2019

There’s magic aplenty in the streets of London right now. It’s not quite Burning Man, but it’s pretty fantastical. Here are our favorites among the wonderful installations at the London Design Festival 2019.

wonderful installations at the London design festival 2019

The 17th edition of the London Design Festival is unfolding across the city from September 14-22.  The V&A Museum is “the official hub” of the festival, which includes installations, conferences, and workshops galore. In total, there are 11 design districts and over 400 events happening all across the capital.

Our friends at The Beaumont hotel in Mayfair tell us that this is one of most highly-anticipated events of the fall each year in London.  Heading into the final days of this year’s event, here are our favorites among all of the wonderful installations at London Design Week this year.

Full of whimsy, beauty, and joy – welcoming, inclusive and provocative. We wish these could hang around longer. If you’re in London, see them while you can!

1. Please be Seated

Designer Paul Cocksedge has turned reclaimed scaffolding planks into a large-scale public installation. 

Formed of three concentric circles that flow up and down like waves, the piece invites pedestrians in Finsbury Avenue Square to pass below its curves or linger on them.

2. The Walala Lounge

French designer Camille Walala has installed benches, planters and flags adorned with her signature colorful patterns along South Molton Street to turn the road into the “Walala Lounge.”

Set to say in place for a year, the installation consists of 10 sculptural benches and a series of cube-shaped planters. Each of the pieces, which were designed with Walala’s creative producer Julia Jomaa, has been designed as a family of furniture that will bring joy to visitors to the street.

The artist says that when color and fun are added to a city, it has real impact on how people experience it. We fully agree.

3. Masters of Disguise

Martino Gamper, Bethan Laura Wood, Soft Baroque and Michael Marriott are among the designers that have created masks for an exhibition at this year’s London Design Festival, and they are definitely among our favorites.

London gallery Seeds presents Masters of Disguise, a show featuring 23 different masks, each designed to represent the character of its maker.

If you were asked to design a mask representing your character, what would it look like?

4. Bamboo Ring

For an installation in the John Madejski Garden at the V&A, Japanese architect Kengo Kuma combines bamboo and carbon fiber to demonstrate how the combination can become a foundation for earthquake-proof architecture. Bamboo Ring serves as a prototype for a new material that can be used to build stronger buildings and homes.

On a higher plane, the piece is also “an exploration of harmony, precision, lightness, and resistance.”

5. The Penthouse

One of our absolute favorite designers, Roksanda Illincic, is debuting a three-story penthouse that she did the interior design for as part of the London Design Festival this year.

Her flagship boutique on Mount Street in Mayfair is a must-visit. Now there’s even more to love!

6. Sea Thing 

Sam Jacob has taken a fabric print based on a pattern of fish and sea creatures, created by Charles and Ray Eames, and updated it. He’s added discarded objects, like plastic bottles, to provoke thought and discussion about ocean pollution and plastic waste.

From there, Jacob created an animation and projected it into a mirrored cube suspended above the Cromwell Road entrance to the V&A Museum. 

The animation starts in 1907, the year that Bakelite – one of the first commercial plastic products – was launched. It ends in 2050, the year scientists predict that the volume of plastic will be greater than marine life in the world’s oceans.

The composition of the work and its majestic setting actually made us think about stained glass windows in a cathedral. Which makes the work feel even more profound and timeless. And the threat of environmental pollution even more grave.

the London Design Festival 2019

Those are our top picks for the best of the London Design Festival this year. How about you? What’s on your must-see list?

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