Designersblock

Designersblock has returned to The Bargehouse on London’s Southbank for this year’s London Design Festival, after exhibiting at Earls Court One last year.

In this wonderfully disheveled shell, there are lots of exciting products – as well as ideas – on display, from established designers and those fresh out of university. Here are a few pieces that caught our attention.

Maker is a collective of four Royal College of Art graduates and kindred spirit Charlie Sekers. Although the graduates are from a textiles background, their products range from the laser-cut ceramics of Imogen Luddy to the sculptural knitted stools created by Claire-Anne O’Brien.

Furniture designer Hendzel & Hunt exhibited its Made in Peckham collection, a range of elegant, yet sturdy-looking, stools, tables and chairs all made from materials salvaged from London’s streets. Constructed from packing crates, old floorboards and mahogany rescued from a refurbished bank, each piece has a story and is held together by carpentry alone rather than pins and glue.

Oslo-based studio Heydeys exhibited work from their ongoing experimental workshops What If Pine. The eight designers got together during the workshop to discuss ideas then went away to create an object each. Sound designer Øyvind Blikstad then created a soundtrack to the exhibition using noises made by the tools which created the pieces. Below is Blikstad’s Reversed Head which allows users to listed to the din of the workshop when you put the headphone into the top of the structure and then when you plug into the side, the melody of the tools when they are arranged to play in harmony.

There were plenty of bizarre vessels at the show, many with ulterior motives behind their unusual shapes. Chooi Leng Tan’s slopping pots have been fashioned with an angular base to allow plants better access to the sun and Christina Bilouri has created a number of dinking vessels aimed at visually-impaired people in busy social situations. The glass below records snapshots of the conversation throughout the evening to mimic taking photos on a night out.

Perhaps most bizarre and impressive was Rohan Chhabra’s Hunter Jacket, which was designed so that people that shoot targets of the non-animal variety can still have a hunting trophy in their homes. Using an intricate network of poppers, zips and buttons, the jacket unzips and re-zips to create a ram head. Don’t believe it – then watch the video here.

Designerblock is at Bargehouse,
Oxo Tower Wharf,
Bargehouse Street,
South Bank,
London SE1 until 26 September.