Now in its 21st year, the London Design Festival (LDF) is firmly established as a highlight of the city’s cultural calendar. Held over nine days (September 16-24) and comprising more than 300 events, installations, and exhibitions across 13 “design districts,” it is a sprawling affair offering dizzying profusion and eclectic variety. Some consistency was given to this year’s festival, however, by exhibitors’ shared focus on the biggest ethical questions facing the profession, from cultural sensitivity to social purpose and environmental impact.
The pursuit of new sustainable materials produced much of the most inventive and stimulating work on show. One of LDF’s “landmark” commissions, Spirit of Place by artist and designer Simone Brewster, was a sophisticated advertisement for cork. Cropped from living trees in a regenerative process, the crumbly bark can be bonded with its own natural resins and used to make furniture or construction materials. Five giant cork “vessels” stood on a newly pedestrianized stretch of the Strand in the city center. With the 8-foot-high columns ribbed and grooved like the peeled trunks of cork oaks and brightly painted in reds, oranges, and greens to suggest the surprisingly rich colors found within, the abstract “forest” invited passersby to consider the origins of the material as well as experience its inherent warmth, texture, and strength.
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