The London Design Festival is celebrating its ninth birthday. Most people have cake and a party, but the LDF (17 - 25 September) has around 280 different shows and events over nine days. The big ones include the 100% Design trade show at Earl's Court with 400 exhibitors and the design takeover at the Victoria and Albert Museum, which visitors will enter through a sweeping wooden arch. But visitors might like to seek out some smaller offerings too, to keep their global design knowledge up-to-date while travelling from west to east across the city. www.londondesignfestival.com
STOP OFF IN SWEDEN
We know that Sweden keeps on producing great design, but you don't often get to see it in the Swedish Ambassador's residence, the 18th-century Robert Adam mansion in central London. The interior was restored recently, and you will be able to take in the Roman frescoes inspired by Adam's own Grand Tour and its stunning library and beautifully decorated drawing rooms, as well as contemporary glass, furniture and textiles.
On show will be the best new products from serious Swedish companies including Svensk Ten (Lisa Hilland's fabulous Pompom leather pouf available to buy in Liberty) and Karl Lagerfeld's new designs for glass company Orrefors (available from Harrods), handmade speakers by Luciano Pasquariello and an innovative felt, sound-absorbent room-divider by Mia Cullin.
Swedish Design Goes London (27 Portland Place, London W1B 1QA)
FULL ENGLISH
Gallery Fumi in Shoreditch is rounding up three designers for its LDF show – Max Lamb, Studio Glithero and Johannes Nagel – under the title Studioware. Each have created a project which uses their own studios to their fullest potential. For German Johannes Nagel, it means making intriguing groupings of ceramic objects compiled out of multiple pieces. Studio Glithero has delved into the fast disappearing world of master plasterworkers to make elegant mirror frames.
Max Lamb has looked to the traditions of English furniture making and come up with a range of furniture under the heading Woodware, composed of dowel rods in woods that have long been used in this country – maple, ash, beech, walnut and cherry. The rod-like composition of the pieces echoes the typical English ladder-backed chairs which go back centuries. It's all new work from some of the brightest young designers on the block.
Studio Ware at Gallery Fumi (87-89 Tabernacle Street, London EC2A 4BA)
DOWN UNDER AT DESIGN JUNCTION
Proving that superstar Marc Newson isn't the only designer to have come out of Australia, a show called Matilda rounds up the country's talent at Designjunction, a new initiative in the art deco Victoria House in Bloomsbury. The 25 designers include 23-year-old Henry Wilson, originally from Sydney but schooled in his craft at the prestigious Design Academy Eindhoven and Rhodes Island School of Design, whose speciality is reinterpreting design classics. His low-energy Anglepoise light will be on show in London.
To circumvent sticky issues around the non-sustainability of lengthy transportation, Australian designers are now having their work manufactured locally. Examples will be Kate Stokes' Coco Flip pendant lamp and Barbera Design's slickbronze table.
Matilda at Design Junction (Victoria House, 37-63 Southampton Row, London WC1B 4DA)
FANCY A DANISH?
Everybody loves Danish super-brand Lego and now the British designer Sebastian Bergne demonstrates its unlikely potential in Covent Garden during the London Design Festival. He is constructing a full-size greenhouse entirely out of the plastic bricks, with transparent walls. Even the "earth" is made of little brown blocks.
Bergne says: "It was a chance to live out a childhood dream – to build something huge and usable out of Lego." He also particularly likes the juxtaposition of something so manufactured and digital with nature: the plants growing inside the greenhouse are all real.
Lego Greenhouse by Sebastian Bergne (North Piazza, Covent Garden)
NORTHERN LIGHTS
Still with the Nordic countries, but this time down the road in Mayfair, the doggedly minimalist Finnish company Artek is showing its White collection with a glowing display in the windows of London's most fashionable emporium, Dover Street Market.
The range of five lights, by Artek's creative director Ville Kokkinen, are a response to the tradition of lighting design, where the fitting takes all the attention. Kokkinen, who has carried out extensive studies into the effect of the lack of light in northern countries, has tried to downplay the structure of the light as much as possible and focusedinstead on the quality of the light emitted.
"I want people to remember what the light felt like, not the design of the shade," he says. The light boxes and pendant lamps (above) use fluorescent bulbs, not LEDS ("They don't produce the diffused, uniform light we wanted," says Ville), and even have a medical certification for their health-giving benefits.
(Dover Street Market, 17-18 Dover Street, London W1S 4LT)
GO EAST FOR SLOVENIA
Slovenia is the country of choice for the thrifty manufacturing of contemporary furniture. Less well known is that it has its own thriving design scene, turning out some excellent contemporary ideas. This year Slovenia is taking up residence at Tent, the East End interiors event in and around the Truman Brewery, and exhibiting 25 product designs from recent years.
The best known Slovenian designer is Nika Zupanc, who has gone from rising star to designing for big names like Moooi and Moroso. Her blown-glass Black Cherry pendant lights will be on display. Other designs will include Janez Suhadolc's Lajt chair, Franc Kuzma's intriguing Filigree Turntables, Gigodesigns Waveflex skis and the Greenline Hybrid, the world's first large-scale hybrid boat.
Silent Revolution/Contemporary Design in Slovenia, www.tentlondon.co.uk (Tent, Old Truman Brewery, London E1 6QL)
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