5 ‘wow’ events during London Design Festival
The workshops and interactive shows you should not miss
The 15th edition of London Design Festival will start tomorrow, 16th of September. With its tight agenda full of interesting events, the festival aims once again at promoting London as the world’s design capital. For those of you who happen to be in the city and would like to take a tour, we suggest to start from these 5 events. They are related to 5 personal passions that cross the world of creativity. Read the following lines to find out which ones and why.
Info: londondesignfestival.com
Opening photo: 5 interactive, must- go events at London Design Festival 2017, from the 16th to the 24th of September
If you have been thinking about improving your handwriting or if you are already quite skilled, and you’d like to learn how to write like a true calligrapher, there’s a lettering agency in London called Better Letters. They will surprise you with their Glowing Alphabet Peep Show: an exhibition with three workshops designed to help you advance in this elegant art. The first workshop focuses on signwriting – the writing of road sign – and it will be held by Mike Meyer, famous artist from Minnesota known for having travelled around the world to spread his passion. The second one, hand lettering, focuses on hand writing and it will be taught by Martina Flor, graphic artist who worked with giants such as The Washington Post, Vanity Fair, Harper Collins, Penguin Random House, Monotype, Etsy, Adobe, FontShop and Cosmopolitan. Finally, Mark Meyer and Ashely Bishop (another talent from the Better Letter team) will guide participants in the fascinating art of writing on gold and glass. Let’s move onto the exhibition organised for London Design Festival. For the curious who prefer looking over doing, there will be a free Peep Show at the Hilton Hotel Bankside displaying more than 27 graphic works to explore the world of writing. So, if you’d like to learn the basis of calligraphy and if you are also passionate about graphics, or simply curious about it, just write this down on your agenda. The workshops will take place from the 16th to the 24th of September at 165a Borough High Street, at The Art Academy Mermaid Court.
On Saturday, 16th September, The New Craftsmen space, a platform with an e-commerce gathering the best British and international craftsmen in the heart of Mayfair, will be transformed into Common Parts Canteen. It will be a creative and commercial hub dedicated to the exposition of the new furniture collection by Sue Skin and to the products of the makers of The New Craftsmen. Sue Skin, artist and former stylist at The World of Interiors, has been collaborating with The New Craftsmen for several years and worked on the Burberry Makers House during last London Design Festival. It was her idea to design the space as a networking spot to share knowledge but also to have a drink. During the entire London Design Festival, this special location will host a series of talks on diverse topics. Amongst these: Provenance, Materiality, Individuality, Community, and Utility. Another interesting initiative is To Manifest a Manifesto, dedicated to visitors who will be asked to write a manifesto on artisanal design that will give shape to the future of the next generations. The aim is to allow young people to live in an eco-sustainable world with a clear image and not manipulated by technology or my social media filters. Another main theme will be design for society, with a focus on invisible communities: all those realities related to design that have a hard time emerging. Michael Krzyzanowski, columnist and historian specialised in product design, will talk about it, guiding visitors through an unknown world that would deserve to have its own voice. So, if you are into craftsmanship and would like to deepen your knowledge about contemporary design, we recommend you keep an eye on these interesting events. The talk schedule is available at the following link:
If you like fabrics and colours and you’d like to take a dip in the texture world with a tactile, jaw-dropping experience, you have to visit Kvadrat exhibition. The Danish firm is known since the late ‘60s for its ability to explore the beauty and the intrinsic value of yarns with the use of a wide chromatic palette. They will take the public through an interactive journey with the My Canvas exhibition hosted at Design Frontiers, inside Somerset House. The show is centred on the work of 19 talents who were asked by the brand to reinterpret its iconic square fabric Canvas 2. Giulio Ridolfo took care of the palette as he is a designer specialised in colour. The other artists are Zeitguised (Germany), BCXSY (The Netherlands), Maria Jeglinska (Poland), Felipe Ribon (France), Christien Meindertsma (The Netherlands), Judith Seng (Germany), YOY Idea (Japan) Moritz Schmid (Switzerland), Cheng-Tsung Feng (Taiwan), Max Lipsey (The Netherlands), GamFratesi (Denmark), Mimi Jung (USA), Chen Williams (USA), Jonathan Muecke (USA), Teruhiro Yanagihara (Japan) Kate Chung Design (China), Clemens Lauer e Max Guderian (Germany) and Butternutten AG (Germany). The aim was to allow London Design Festival visitors to have a first-hand experience, to understand the potential of materials and the outcome obtained by making full use of the structural and architectural properties of fabric.
Slave/Master, dance meets robotics
Robot mon amour. During the entire London Design Festival, memorable 4-minute scenes of dance performances (by robots and humans) will be displayed inside the evocative Raphael Cartoons Room 48a, at the V&A Museum. Whether you are into robotics or contemporary dance (dancers are from the London Contemporary Ballet Theatre), this event will doubtlessly surprise you. How? Combining contemporary dance, advanced robotics and engaging graphics. The performance is called Slave/Masters and it explores the relationship between men and machine. It is sponsored by KUKA Robotics UK, Autodesk, Adelphi Automation and SCM Handling. The concept, the costumes and the production were taken care by BR Innovation Agency, with a special technology of graphic projection by Holition.
Take four artists from Brixton (one of the London Design Festival districts) and gather them for an exhibition – ID Papers– that explores the potential of paper at the Animali Domestici space. The outcome will leave you speechless. These talents have been selected by the gallery for their irreverent spirit and experimental approach to materials and processes. They will display their respective works in a space designed to offer an immersive experience to the public. Each installation will reveal the individual path taken by each artist presenting a new perspective on a specific subject. One of the installations is Pimp My Judd by Roberto Foddai, an artist from Sardinia (Italy) who moved to the United Kingdom. He will present a collection of six pieces of furniture inspired by Donald Judd’s iconographic drawings. Another one is Cosmos, a manual interpretation of cosmic landscapes and interplanetary journeys by Katja Behre, German colour designer specialised in psychology of shapes. Furthermore, you should not miss Penelope’s Dreams, a workshop by Zuzana Lalikova that will create on the spot a 7-meter-long tapestry with a freestanding embroidery loom made of copper tubes and placed on the ground floor of the gallery. Penelope, who has been discovering the fibre and textile world for a long time, is becoming increasingly interested in new technologies, although remaining anchored to craftsmanship, close to her heart. Finally, we recommend Tappeti Stellati (in the picture). It’s characterised by four 48-cm drawings made in black and blue ink on translucent paper and hung to the gallery ceilings. The author is Gaya Giacometti, Italian artist graduated in Furniture and Interior Design at Goldsmith University, who also presented her collections together with Calligaris at the last Salone del Mobile in Milan. If you happen to be in Brixton Design District and if you like local design and are curious to explore the world of paper discovering its potential and different uses, don’t miss this exhibition.
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