Search

LDF13: designjunction

designjunction returned to the London Design Festival for its third iteration (its second in the former Royal Mail sorting office) with a cacophony of design, color, pattern and texture that was at times almost overwhelming in its intensity. Providing a moment of calm amongst the chaos, Thorody’s new fabric (above) is named after the founders’ cat Ivor!

designjunction_07

The ground floor was a consumer-friendly collection of pop-up shops and food stalls and included a lot of emerging designers. It was great to see Lovely Pigeon’s new stationery range including flashes of very on-trend copper.

designjunction_08

I love Kangan Arora’s colorful cushions. She said: “My collection is inspired by Indian street culture. It’s all about celebrating color and pattern in a very contemporary context.”

designjunction_09

Richard Brendon’s mirrored tea cups are a stroke of genius and I love the Warp and Reason collaboration with pattern specialists Patternity.

designjunction_11

Lindsay Lang’s contemporary twists on mid-century patterns are hotly tipped to be the next big thing in interior products. Originally trained in fine art, she said: “My aim is to create high-quality functional products that are truly original works of art for the home.”

designjunction LDF13

Upstairs larger stands created a calmer atmosphere where new designers rubbed shoulders with established brands. Chair for the Roof of the Palmyra Hotel by Martin Boyce, David MacKenzie, and Raymond MacDonald was part of the GOODD – Visual Objects for the Home stand: a collection by ten artists and designers produced to showcase the creative work coming out of Scotland.

designjunction_02

Base is a collection of functional pots for daily use from Bravo!, rocking two of the London Design Festival’s key trends in one item – wood and copper.

designjunction_04

It would take a hard-hearted dog person to walk past Gavin Coyle’s Companion Rack without a smile. I wonder if it can fetch slippers too!

designjunction_05

More talent from Scotland: I loved Catherine Aitken’s Fade Stool. Catherine won the Time to Design 2012 award and created the Fade collection during a residency at the Danish Art Workshops. The stools combine a powder-coated steel structure with a round sheet of plywood, which is wrapped in intricately woven cotton cords sourced from Japan.

designjunction_10

And finally, the lovely Kyla McCallum launched her Sonobe lighting collection, the result of years of experimentation with an origami module originally invented in the 60s.

Our trip to the London Design Festival was supported by Airbnb.com.

Katie Treggiden is a purpose-driven journalist, author and, podcaster championing a circular approach to design – because Planet Earth needs better stories. She is also the founder and director of Making Design Circular, a program and membership community for designer-makers who want to join the circular economy. With 20 years' experience in the creative industries, she regularly contributes to publications such as The Guardian, Crafts Magazine and Monocle24 – as well as being Editor at Large for Design Milk. She is currently exploring the question ‘can craft save the world?’ through an emerging body of work that includes her fifth book, Wasted: When Trash Becomes Treasure (Ludion, 2020), and a podcast, Circular with Katie Treggiden.