London Design Festival, the annual celebration of design, kicked off this week. Beyond the tentpole exhibitions at the V&A Museum, designjunction, London Design Fair (formerly TENT/Superbrands), and 100% Design, this year’s festivities include the 2nd edition of the London Design Biennale showcasing 40 country/city/territory pavilions with a number of excellent projects focused on designing the future of food.
Sensorial Estates of Hong Kong
This sensorial installation uses smell to take visitors on a virtual tour of Hong Kong. Exploring how smell can revive memories and invoke nostalgia, the scents are meant to explore the regional smells of Hong Kong itself. The exhibition uses scratch-and-sniff wallpapers and aroma-infused objects to add visual stimulation to the array of scents.
Smallbone of Devizes: Nature As the Future of Design
Accompanying an art installation by Maddox Gallery, interior design firm Smallbone of Devizes is hosting a series of workshops that focus on sustainable futures and the natural world. Included among the workshops is a master class in propagation, teaching participants how to easily produce more plants in urban gardens.
This greenhouse of the future, brought together by the Netherlands’ Het Nieuwe Instituut, seeks to demonstrate how design can contribute to sustainability. The “Power Plant” greenhouse uses solar power to grow food and produce the electricity needed for its farming. A nutrient-enriched hydroponic water system also reduces the greenhouse’s water consumption by 90% compared to traditional agriculture.
ALTER by Kathleen Reilly and Studio Augmenta
Designers Kathleen Reilly and Christopher Melgram of Studio Augmenta have produced a tableware-inspired installation, exhibited in the window of creative consultancy Next Big Thing’s Regent Street location. Reilly’s conceptual silverware is transferred as a still-life print onto a tablecloth, with mirrors reflecting objects from the print around the exhibition.
Scholten & Beijings: Time For Tea
On display on the first floor of the Fortnum & Mason store in Picadilly, Dutch design duo Scholten & Baijings have built an immersive design installation that pays homage to the ritual of tea. The exhibition centers around a wide range of shades of green, visible in the 80 different tea service and furniture products, designed by firms across the world.Scholten & Beijings cite a desire to merge traditional tea rituals with contemporary Dutch design as the driving force behind their design.
