Highlights from London Design Festival

Design Indaba Expo manager Kelly Berman shares her five highlights from her recent trip to London Design Festival. With an exclusive video crew in-tow, it’s a fabulously audio-visual snapshot of the annual exposé.

Piet Hein Eek’s prototype lamp at Tom Dixon

The Dock, Tom Dixon’s headquarters at Portobello Dock, has become an out-of-the-way gathering spot during the London Design Festival. This year, he invited Nika Zupanc and Piet Hein Eek to exhibit in his shop, where Piet unveiled this huge multi-shade lamp, a prototype for a new design we’ll be seeing more of soon.

South African designers at MINT

A great surprise was spotting one of Willowlamp’s chandeliers in the window of Mint in the Brompton Design District. For the London Design Festival, owner Lina Kanafani put together an eclectic range of pieces by upcoming South African talent, which included Adam Hoets’s lights, Gregor Jenkin’s furniture and 3-D sculptures by Michaella Janse van Vuuren.

Benjamin Hubert at designjunction

Young London-based industrial designer Benjamin Hubert’s new Pelt chair for De La Espada seamlessly wraps a Tshirt-shaped plywood seat around solid wood legs. Every detail is resolved, resulting in an elegant but economical piece that looks timeless. As part of his exhibit at designjunction, Benjamin deconstructed each finished product with a display of the materials used – whether cement, cork, plywood or underwear fabric – to reveal his materials-driven process.

JAILmake at TENT London

London design studio JAILmake took exposing their work processes one step further, by condensing their 205sqm workshop into a 5sqm stand at TENT London. They had no products on show, yet visitors walking past stood in wonder, while the three designers worked on projects, undeterred. “We’re worried that designing and making are becoming distanced, and we want to bring them back together,” they said.

The new Central Saint Martins campus

Designed by architects Stanton Williams, the campus is the creative heart of a massive urban regeneration project that has transformed 67 acres of derelict land to the north of King’s Cross and St Pancras International railway stations. The college, situated in a converted granary and two railway transit sheds, was the site of the Global Design Forum, a one-day conference that invited luminaries such as Yves Béhar and Thomas Heatherwick to engage in debates about pressing issues affecting the design world. 

Design Indaba will be uploading all their London Design Festival videos over the next few weeks. See them all here.