London Design Festival Preview – Clerkenwell Design District

Clerkenwell is something of a design behemoth, making up one of the largest of the London Design Festival districts, and hosting its own independent Clerkenwell Design Week in the spring.

One of the main destinations in Clerkenwell is Designersblock, which will be at the Farmiloe building this year. The nomadic event has previously been held at the Truman Brewery in Shoreditch, St Pancras Station and the Bargehouse next to the Oxo Tower.

Designersblock will host talks and present exhibitions of work from across design disciplines. Arts Thread will be offering portfolio advice to graduates and students, and the work of ten students has been chosen by Designersblock to be displayed next to more established designers.

The cheekily titled exhibition Fondle and Squeeze will open at Scin’s Material and Architecture Gallery on September 21, featuring ten gallery installations including Emily Hillier’s knot textiles. Scin will also be launching A Right Royal G & T Party, a 2.7m² pixellated panel of a portrait made of 8130 3D felt ‘pixels’ inspired by origami and created by designer and intensive care nurse Melanie Watts.

Elsewhere, The Auction Room, on St John Street, curated by Mariana Pestana and Designersblock creates a fictional auction room space, in which all of the objects- even the hammer- are themselves up for auction. Fifteen designers were invited to create the various action room components. Reflecting the idea that the auction room itself is fake, the designers were challenged to work around the theme of fallacy.  People are expected to bid on the items through a swapping system – no money will be accepted.

The Flos and Moroso lighting and furniture design shop on Rosebery Avenue has been transformed into Galleria Illy ,, hosting a number of art and design events over the LDF period. Following the brilliant Art Meets Design conversation session between performance artist Marina Abramovic and Spanish designer Patricia Urquiola on Tuesday, LDF will see product and interior designer Marcel Wanders hosting a lunchtime design event on September 23.

Jeweller and paper artist Clara Breen is also looking to coffee for her LDF exhibition of framed paper ‘drawings’, which will be displayed on the walls of Dose Espresso on Long Lane.

Other highlights include Toto’s bathroom designs; Bernhardt Design’s Workshop collection of textiles and a chaise from Dutch designers Kiki van Eijk and Joost van Bleiswijk; Modus’ exhibition of chairs, Process; the launch of Timorous Beasties’ new Autumn collections; and the Twentytwentyone showroom’s relaunch of the classic 1952 Robin Day chair.

We’re also looking forward to Dreamspace Gallery’s exhibition of entries for this year’s Design Against Fur poster competition, and an innovative show at cycle repair and coffee shop Look Mum No Hands! of furniture for bikes.

For more information see http://www.londondesignfestival.com/

The London Design Festival runs from 17-25 September. See the Design Week blog for our previews of Brompton, Pimlico, 100% Design, Covent Garden and Fitzrovia Now. We will be previewing Shoreditch and other key design destinations tomorrow.