Design comes to London

With the London Design Festival fast approaching we thought that it would be useful to highlight some of the key destinations for interiors, furniture and product design.  

The Festival runs from 14th until 23rd September and encompasses all forms of design from Graphic Design to Fashion. The key destinations below mostly cover interiors and furniture however for details of other design events you can view a calendar on the London Design Festival website.  

100% Design – 19th-22nd September, Earls Court  

Decorex – 23-16th September, The Royal Hospital, Chelsea  

Tent London – 20th-23rd September, Old Truman Brewery  

Design Junction – 19th-23rd September, The Sorting Office, W1  

Clerkenwell Design Week – 21st-23rd September, Various Venues, Clerkenwell  

ICON Design Trail, September, Various Venues  

Super Brands, 20th-23rd September, Old Truman Brewery  

Before 1980, 22nd September, Central Islington Library  

For full details of all these events please click on the event title to go to their websites.

Here’s to a great festival of design!

Floating cinema at Venice Biennale

This year's Venice Biennale will feature the 'Achipelago Cinema', a floating, outdoor auditorium.

This interesting cinema installation has been designed by Beijing-based architect Ole Scheeren an is constructed from a modular raft. It will be fixed in the Darsena Grande of the Arsenal, which is an historic shipyard in the heart of Venice, during the 13th Architectural Biennale.

There will be various public events held on the platform during the festival as well as the premier of 'Against all Rules', which is a documentary by Horst Brandenburg.

After the festival the structure will travel the globe to film festivals worldwide.

Find out more here.

Photographs of Power celebrated at Prix Pictet

The Rencontres d’Arles festival has announced the shortlist for the fourth Prix Pictet with the subject of Power. There are 12 shortlisted photographers from ten countries that present a wide range of unique perspectives.

From the veteran lenses of Joel Sternfeld, whose images capture “moments of horror” on the faces of attendees to the 11 United Nations Conference on Climate Change as they hear about ecological collapse, to Robert Adams – the oldest nominee – whose documentations of deforestation in the American Northwest are as terrible as they are moving.

Se more of these fantastic images here.

Winning advertising at the Cannes Lion Festival of Creativity

This year's the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity saw many of the world's leading advertising agencies win awards for some fantastic creative.

There were 15 individual winners for ads out of the 5,195 entries, a demonstration that the advertising industry is still producing some outstanding quality productions.

See three of the winning entries below or visit Adweek to see all 15.  



Chipotle "Back to the Start" - Agency: Creative Artists Agency, Los Angeles



Canal+ "The Bear",  Agency: BETC, Paris



The Guardian "Three Little Pigs", Agency: BBH, London

A river of LED light in Tokyo

Ever wondered what 100,000 solar-powered LED spheres look like floating down a river then wonder no more.

As part of the Tokyo Hotaru Festival held in May 100,000 blue glowing spheres were floated down the river, lighting it as they passed. It was designed to be reminiscent of a swarm of fireflies and to capture the way nature intended to brighten up our surroundings.

Front row tickets were a sell out and the spheres were eventually caught downstream in giant nets, ensuring no pollution. 

What a sight.

London Festival of Architecture

The London Festival of Architecture is almost upon us, starting on 23rd June.

The Festival is a city-wide celebration of architecture and architectural talent and brings architects and communities together to examine how we make London a better place.

This year's theme is ‘The Playful City’, responding to the presence in London of the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

The Festival runs from 23rd June until 8th July.

Find out more on the Festival website.

The Bloomsbury Festival

Store Street's South Crescent - home to NLA and The Building Centre - will be transformed this weekend into a hive of creative activity as part of the Bloomsbury Festival.

On offer will be family-friendly, free workshops in which visitors can draw, build, sculpt and photograph Bloomsbury. They can help build a giant 3D masterplan and capture views of the area with a super-sized pinhole camera pod, while listening to vinyl classics from a mobile 'disco trike' built from recycled scrap materials.

WORKSHOPS AND ACTIVITIES TAKE PLACE SAT 22 AND SUN 23 OCTOBER, 12NOON - 5.00PM

Re-Drawing Bloomsbury (Saturday only)
 Participate in an interactive drawing workshop which re-interprets Bloomsbury from a bird's eye perspective, forming part of a collaborative and temporary installation on the windows of The Building Centre on Store Street, run by Mobile Studio (Art + Architecture) and students from The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL.

Making Masterplans (Saturday only)
Collaborate with Mobile Studio (Art + Architecture) and students from The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL on a giant 3D model which will re-build Bloomsbury as an alternative and temporary masterplan in the centre of the South Crescent.

Pinhole Picture Pod (Sunday only)
Make like Vermeer and Canaletto and use the Pinhole Picture Pod - a 21st Century camera obscura designed by students from the Architectural Association - to view a live 'photograph' of Bloomsbury and perfect your own sketching skills. Climb inside the pod to sketch your own view of Bloomsbury and then work up your drawing with the help of architectural students, or help use the device to take a giant permanent photograph of the scene unfolding outside.

Other workshops include ‘Faces of Bloomsbury’ in which guests can create a photographic installation with images of locals, a ‘Lower Carbon Drive Talk’ from Andrew Scoones, Director at The Building Centre and the ‘Contemporary Architecture Walk’ led by Peter Murray, Chairman of NLA.  There is also ‘Make your own Jewellery and Storage Solutions’ where artists Isabelle Bricknall, Stacy Darling and Lydia Smith-Aouane will be hosting a workshop creating fun storage solutions from discarded cardboard boxes donated by The Co-Operative Food.

The Bloomsbury Festival is an entirely free cultural Festival, taking place across the whole of this wonderful part of central London. There are over one hundred local organizations involved in making the Festival happen.

For more information visit www.bloomsburyfestival.org.uk or to read more about the festival and the NLA visit www.newlondonarchitecture.org

Vintage Festival comes to the Southbank

The Vintage Festival ios coming to the Southbank, London in July celebrating vintage Britain - an event not to be missed!

This is what they have to say about the event,

'Whether your thing is swing, rockabilly, mod, soul, funk, disco, ska, electro, cabaret, film, art or design, or if you just want to dress up and get an authentic make-over for a day, Vintage at Southbank Centre is a sensual delight, a big dressing-up box, a collector’s dream and a joyous creative feast for all ages. For one glamorous weekend we celebrate the music, fashion, film, art , design, and dance from the 1920s to the 1980s (and maybe even a peek at the early ‘90s) that has made Britain the world’s creative and cultural hotbed....

The event takes place over the three days at the Royal Festival Hall which will be set dressed across the six levels. It will be transformed into a multi-venue playground where pass holders can ‘learn the dances’, enjoy a makeover take in the live performances, exclusive DJ sets, catwalk shows, wonderfully conceived food and cocktails, the cream of the crop vintage retailers and surprises galore. Vintage favourites The Soul Casino, Let it Rock, The Torch Club, The Leisure Lounge and The Warehouse are amongst the ten nightclubs contained within Royal Festival Hall.

To find out more visit their web site.

Digital Shoreditch Festival

Shoreditch as UK's premier digital hub. This is what the festival celebrates - enabling the public to experiment with the latest innovation and participate in broad sense. It is a showcase for new faces and talents across the UK and the occasion for industry leaders to display cutting-edge developments in the digital world. This will also be more than the festival series alone: the digital content created, as the interactive maps and the community itself, aims at informally facilitate an enormous spectrum of individuals and companies to connect and exchange ideas.

Late-night parties, eye-catching displays (lighting up buildings), real-world interactive installations, and augmented reality games.
For such a creative flair, we couldn't miss the very cool iPhone app (and Android). Together with the social media functions to stay in touch with the latest news and tweets, an augmented reality mode shows you a streetview with event pop-ups and distances. You can even view the number of visitors in real time. Now, THIS is some use of digital media.

From Tuesday 3rd to Saturday 7th May 2011. Have a look on their website to book your place, some of the events are really cool.