Our Top 10 picks for the London Design Festival

The 2012 London Design Festival starts today, and as usual, it looks packed with fantastic inspiring exhibitions, talks and events covering every aspect of design. Looking through the agenda for this year, we have picked 10 things we think will be worth a look. In no particular order:

Mashiko Pottery: A Japanese Making of Modern Ceramics – at Tent London


http://www.londondesignfestival.com/events/mashiko-pottery-japanese-making-modern-ceramics

‘Beauty in functionality’ is the Mashiko ideology. This is clear in their warm appearance, individual quirks and timeless crafted pieces. This exhibition includes a rare opportunity to see the work of Tomoo Hamada – read more about the work of the Hamada family here.

Tent London – 20-23rd Sept 

 

The intimate world of Gio Ponti – talk at the V&A


http://www.londondesignfestival.com/events/intimate-world-gio-ponti

A design talk to coincide with the exhibition Vivere alla Ponti, which is part of this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale.
Gio Ponti – Italian design hero who crossed Architecture, Industrial Design, Furniture, Art, also founded Domus (on Twitter too @DomusWeb).

V&A – 20 September 

 

Cover Stories: Wallpaper* Limited-Edition Covers – talk at the V&A


http://www.londondesignfestival.com/events/cover-stories-wallpaper-limited-edition-covers

I am becoming more and more obsessed with the behind the scenes, making of and ‘uncut’. Meirion Pritchard, Art Director for Wallpaper magazine will talk through some of its collaborating artists, and explain the process in creating these award-winning covers.

V&A – 17 September 

 

Mimicry Chairs by Nendo – exhibition at the V&A

http://www.londondesignfestival.com/events/mimicry-chairs

Awesome work from Japanese design house Nendo, whose concept states: ”We’d like the people who’ve encountered Nendo’s designs to feel these small “!” moments intuitively.” I tend to use more straight-talking language, but this certainly describes the recent Nendo exhibition I saw at the Saatchi Gallery. I’m looking forward to seeing these intriguing chairs which play with positive and negative space in a contrasting environment.

More about that previous Nendo Saatchi exhibition on Core77. Check out Nendo’s amazing bird apartments, which we also stumbled across this week.
V&A 14-23 September

 

Rankin – talk at the V&A

http://www.londondesignfestival.com/events/rankin

Rankin, who recently enriched every newsagent up and down the UK with his new magazine Hunger almost a year ago, will be speaking at the V&A about his prolific career. Expect big statements and big imagery.

V&A – 2 October

 

Digital Crystal: Swarovski and the Design Museum

http://www.londondesignfestival.com/events/digital-crystal-swarovski-and-design-museum

Swarovski’s creative collaborations continue featuring commissions from a wide range of individuals and studios including Ron Arad, Yves Behar and Paul Cocksedge. I’m most looking forward to seeing the output of Troika.
Design Museum – 15 Sept – 13 January 

Transformation – UK Design for Performance – exhibition at the V&A


http://www.londondesignfestival.com/events/transformation-%E2%80%93-uk-design-performance

Multi-media awe-inspiring big-stuff. Designs include Sutra by Antony Gormley, War Horse by Rae Smith and Lady Gaga’s Monster Ball Tour by Es Devlin.
V&A – till 30 September

 

Breakfast with Heatherwick – at the V&A

http://www.londondesignfestival.com/events/breakfast-heatherwick

We were lucky enough to welcome Stuart Wood, one of Heatherwick Studio’s senior designers to do an inspiration talk at our London offices earlier this year. So this event with Thomas Heatherwick himself, doing an exclusive tour of the current exhibition looks like one not to be missed.

V&A – 20th September 

 

100% Design at Earl’s Court

http://www.londondesignfestival.com/events/100-design

The UK’s biggest contemporary architecture and interior design event features loads of great stuff, including exhibits from international brands as well as emerging brands, famous-name seminars and informal talks.  Quite a few of us are going along next week so it’s likely we’ll be talking about it again on the blog – watch this space!

Earls Court, 19-22 September

 

Acts of Design & Creation – exhibition and talk

http://www.londondesignfestival.com/events/acts-design-creation

What does it take for an idea to be made into reality? Designer Alun Heslop talks about the making of the Hammerhead chair; product design from sketch right through to production.

Timothy Mark Limited – 18th and 20th September 

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