Designers in Residence
The Design Museum on the South East bank of the Thames is playing host to a hand-selected group of five recent design graduates. Each has been given their own space to transform with their work, including the entrance hall and café. Tomas Alonso, Sarah van Gameren, Finn Magee, Chris O’Shea and Richard Sweeney are the designers in question, whose work is linked by original concepts, unconventional techniques and new technologies. We’re especially intrigued by van Gameren’s ‘Big Dipper’ installation- part production line and part performance art – whereby a machine repeatedly dips large wicks into vats of molten wax to produce candle chandeliers. ‘Big Dipper’ will be activated between 2pm and 4pm each day of the exhibition.
When: 12th September to 14th October
Where: The Design Museum, Shad Thames, London, SE1 2YD
Established & Sons: ‘Elevating Design’
Eschewing the design festival tradition of launching and showcasing new products Established & Sons, the British bastions of frontier-pushing design are instead hosting a non-selling exhibition of design objects that have been reworked into art. The company’s intention is to generate discourse about the increasingly blurred boundaries between design and art or ‘Design Art’ as the genre is known.
When: 17th to 24th September
Where: P3 Space, Westminster university, 35 Marylebone Road, NW1 5LS
Size+Matter
Size+Matter is a project devised specially by the London Design Festival to form a showcase event throughout the programme and introduce the South Bank as the new hub. Matching Amanda Levete and Zaha Hadid with public venues on the Southbank and a specific material each to work with (Levete with Corian, Hadid with concrete) the architects have been charged to create an installation that pushes the limitations of the material used and opens up design to a public audience. The two pieces will then be auctioned off by Phillips de Pury in a walking auction at the end of the feastival.
When: 15th to 25th September
Where: external sites around the Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, SE1 8XX
Pia Wallen Ultrasilencer
In celebration of their new flagship opening on Brompton Road, Skandium are launching one of our favourite designs this year, Pia Wallen’s Ultrasilencer for Electrolux. Why until now nobody’s had the gumption to try and eliminate one of life’s most unpleasant sounds, we simply don’t know. But the Swedish designer Wallen has injected a sweet note to the bitter reality of domestic chores, by creating a beautiful vacuum cleaner that mimics the extraordinary quietness of falling snow. Flashes of orange on some of the white machine’s controls are inspired by the guide poles used to mark the pathways through the snow-covered Swedish winter landscape.
When: 15-25 September
Where: Skandium, 147 Brompton Road, SW3 2EP
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