LEFT In the King’s Cross Design District, Tom Dixon will be showing his MELT dichroic chandelier

FRONT / LONDON DESIGN FESTIVAL

ABOVE Swivel by Sabine Marcelis is one of the LDF’s Landmark Projects in central London

Autumn 2022

TIME HAS FLOWN for those who remember the origins of the London Design Festival (LDF), which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. In the early days, there were the annual pilgrimages to must-see show 100% Design at the now-defunct art deco Earls Court Exhibition Centre. Similarly memorable was design fair Designjunction, held one year in the atmospheric yet ramshackle Old Sorting Office in Holborn.

‘LDF was modest at first, with 35 partners ranging from retailers to academic institutions,’ recalls Ben Evans, who co-founded LDF with Sir John Sorrell in 2003. ‘Now we have just under 300.’

One of LDF’s key aims was to engage the public, not just the creative industries. Awareness of LDF was considerably raised when it began to commission monumental outdoor works from 2007 onwards. ‘One was architect Shigeru Ban’s Paper Tower of 2009 near Waterloo Station that caught the eye of people rushing to get their trains,’ remembers Evans.

‘A challenge early on was that people would come to LDF but didn’t know where to go,’ he adds. ‘So, in 2009, we introduced the idea of design districts that help to orientate visitors.’ This year, there are 12 districts – Brompton (in South Kensington), Clerkenwell, Islington, King’s Cross, Mayfair, Shoreditch, Southwark South, William Morris Design Line (in Walthamstow), Greenwich Peninsula, Park Royal, Bankside and Pimlico.

One major outdoor project this year is Dutch designer Sabine Marcelis’ installation, Swivel, in central London. This will consist of marble, quartzite and travertine limestone chairs that look heavy yet rest on ball bearings, allowing them to rotate so that sitters can turn to and interact with each other.

Brompton reliably showcases design of a more conceptual kind, thanks to its

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