As the London Design Festival begins, AnOther picks the five highlights of 2014's schedule
Since its inception in 2003, the London Design Festival has provided a stage for the world’s next batch of design creatives. A cultural love letter of sorts, the event has previously hosted world-renowned artists such as Renaissance man Rick Owens and his furniture, as well as British industrial design guru Tom Dixon. As it opens today, we scratch beneath the surface of the festival’s most subversive, yet delightful, oddities; from a home fit for a pigeon to a very literal interpretation of, “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure”. With a staggering 300 events taking place across the capital, AnOther picks the five unmissable ones.
JOSEPH // VIPCorner
From building battle chariots to sanding down coffee tables, Craig Narramore, the man responsible for kitting out Hollywood sets with props and special effects for some of the box office’s biggest hits (read: Christopher Nolan’s Batman and George Lucas’s Star Wars) has turned his hand to designing for the everyday. But while he might have established himself as a key name in the design world, he hasn’t lost his flair for special effects, giving life to handcrafted timber furniture by injecting it with molten metal. For the festival, Narramore and designers such as Xavier Lust, Nathalie Pasqua and CLAMcollective have been brought together by curator Sophie Tremlett in JOSEPH's flagship Fulham Road store, to showcase their extraordinary works in a celebration of the fashion brand's longstanding relationship with art and design.
Dan Tobin Smith: The First Law of Kipple
A discarded prosthetic leg, an acid house smiley and Terry Gilliam’s 90s film Twelve Monkeys are just a handful of the ‘kipple’ that artist Dan Tobin Smith has collected, colour-coded and meticulously arranged around his East London studio. Inspired by Philip K Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Sheep, in which the author first introduced the term, Tobin Smith’s (very) literal interpretation has seen him transform London’s forgotten junk into an immersive 200-meter rainbow installation.
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DESIGN ON FILM: David Lynch’s Lost Highway
If David Lynch has to be described in one word, it’s dedicated. Example? Famously remodelling his Hollywood home (one of three in a row that he owns on the same street) for cult noir thriller Lost Highway, inserting slit-style windows on its exterior as well as a tunnelled hallway inside. On the heels of his wonderful interview in AnOther’s A/W issue, the film will be dissected by author Richard Martin, who will delve into the eerie design and architectural elements that frequent the auteur's surrealist world.
Landmark Project: A Place Called Home
An ode to Trafalgar Square’s longest standing residents is in order. Long gone are the days of rootling in gutters and underneath park benches, London’s feathered friends are set to see their dream home realised – pigeon portraits, outdoor perching space and roosting boxes included. The project is courtesy of British designer Jasper Morrison, who alongside design firms Patternity, Raw Edges and Studioilse, will use the space to reimagine what the word ‘home’ means to them. With support from AirBnB, the designers’ visions will be scaled-down, built-up and put on show to the public.
Yohji Yamamoto and Torsten Neeland: Urban Nomads
Torsten Neeland’s ability to elevate the banality of the everyday object, from a serving tray to a coathanger, is the central tenet of his design philosophy. It would seem appropriate then, that his pairing with fashion revolutionary Yohji Yamamoto’s sub-brand Y's – a man who has long condemned fashion’s throw-away nature – is taking place. The Yamamoto space will serve as the backdrop to Neeland’s creations as well as photographer Thomas Krappitz, whose photographs will illustrate the interaction between Neeland’s creations and the Japanese iconoclast’s space, alongside his designs.
London Design Festival runs across London until September 21.
Text by Ashleigh Kane
