London Design Festival highlights

Meg Shirayama's 'L series' paintings at Rocket

Day 1

Though the London Design Festival booklet lists many an exhibition that should have been open for a few days now, there’s a distinct wind of frantic, last-minute unwrapping across much of the city. Not to say there isn’t heaps to see already. In fact there’s more going on all week, everywhere, than in previous years. It’s a mark of London’s growing status in the design world; that people travel to show here more hence more people travel to come and see - and suddenly the event accelerates in scale and quality. And, despite the drone of vacuum cleaners and smell of fresh paint, if day one is anything to go by, it’s going to be quite a week. Thus far, illusion and experiments with materials are the key things at play.