London Design Festival highlights

Following the success of Size + Matter - Zaha Hadid and Amanda Levete’s adventures respectively with concrete and Corian last year - the London Design Festival this year commissioned architect David Adjaye to explore the limits of another material. Taking over the space behind the Royal Festival Hall, Adjaye has built a double cell-like, elliptical structure out of American tulipwood. The material isn’t often used because it decays very quickly, but thanks to a new treatment it acts more like a hardwood. The slatted structure plays with notions of space and light: standing inside it feels remarkably sheltered and enclosed for such a fragile structure that offers relatively little protection from the elements, and when viewed from the outside it looks strangely impenetrable. ‘Sclera’ is the outer layer of the eyeball, which though slightly unappealing seems a bizarrely appropriate name for the structure. http://www.adjaye.com