With hundred of exhibitions and events going on around London, in venues including Somerset House and the V&A, we're here to stop you getting overwhelmed by picking out the best of London Design Festival 2015. You're welcome…
Our picks from the London Design Festival 2015
From 19-27 September, London Design Week will take over the capital to prove once again that it's the world's coolest city. With hundreds of exhibitors transforming everything from earwigs to electric pylons into art, we're not about to argue…
by Aby Dunsby
SMALL: Curiosity Cloud
Acclaimed Austrian design team Mischer’Traxler are bringing their new interactive installation at the V&A’s Norfolk House Music Room. Filled with 250 flying insects, it's sure to create quite a buzz. (Sorry). Yep, it sounds mildly horrifying, but bear with us: each insect is handmade and printed onto foil in the artists' studio, and enclosed in an illuminated glass globe. Rather than making your skin crawl, these insects will actually make you coo as they shimmer in the light and hum quietly until you walk towards them, when they will react by flying faster and tapping against the glass.
MEDIUM: The Drawing Room
Designer Faye Toogood is known for her love of the avant garde, and her new installation The Drawing Room at Somerset House is suitably off-the-wall in all senses. Toogood encourages you to shift your expectations – there'll be no genteel notions in her drawing room. Instead, you'll walk into what looks like a derelict country house, surreally decorated with origami ornaments and furniture made of abstracted cardboard sculptures. The walls might be adorned with paintings, but here, they've been drawn on to the walls in a childlike scrawl, as have the rest of the surroundings. We remember doing a Toogood in our own drawing room as a kid. It wasn't as well received, though…
LARGE: A Bullet from a Shooting Star
It might be one of London's former no-man's lands, but Greenwich Peninsula has been getting a lot of love in recent years. It's already home to a cable car and a vast arena – now it's set to become a residential hub with the creation of 15,000 shiny new flats. British sculptor Alex Chinneck's 35-metre-tall steel sculpture references the area's industrial past while pointing to its future. Commissioned by the Peninsula's property developers Knight Dragon, Chinneck's inverted electricity pylon weighs 15 tons and will light up at night, becoming a beacon for the area. Did someone say 'gentrification'?
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