London’s Design Festival

The fifth London Design Festival got off to a mixed start. At the opening ceremony at the Festival Hall, mayor Ken Livingstone presented the inaugural London Design Medal to Zaha Hadid to much applause from the crowd. ’I’d rather that [London] be second in financial services and first in creative industries. No one comes to look at a city for its bankers,’ quipped Ken, to more clapping, before planting a big kiss on the architect’s cheek.

Later, the party moved upstairs to the sixth-floor Design Embassy, but the euphoria subsided when a woman described as a ’gatecrasher’ chucked a glass of bubbly over a party-goer and attacked his male companion with the empty flute, requiring him to attend hospital. Things had really kicked off.

The fifth London Design Festival got off to a mixed start. At the opening ceremony at the Festival Hall, mayor Ken Livingstone presented the inaugural London Design Medal to Zaha Hadid to much applause from the crowd. ’I’d rather that [London] be second in financial services and first in creative industries. No one comes to look at a city for its bankers,’ quipped Ken, to more clapping, before planting a big kiss on the architect’s cheek.

London’s Design Festival may not have the commercial or deal-making appeal of other European events in Milan or Cologne, but for diversity and emerging talent London is sovereign. With more than 200 events, mainly centred on the ’hubs’ of Brompton, Brick Lane and the Festival Hall, it was hard not to be impressed by people’s resourcefulness and innovation. It’s a shame that some of the mainstream players in British design, the likes of Heal’s and Habitat, chose to stay away.

That aside, the two recurring themes of the festival were design-art and sustainability. The former, being awash with cash, had the largest galleries, the shiniest parties and the bigger buzz. The love-hate relationship many in the design industry have with limited-edition work - bought for vast figures not to be used but to be admired, stored and later sold for even vaster sums - was in evidence at shows such as Grandmateria, Trash Luxe and Established & Sons’ ’Elevating Design’, where party-goers grumbled about elitism and prices while downing Martinis made possible by those very same prices.

There’s less cash in sustainability, which in essence is about using, replacing and buying less - not the message the furniture industry wants to trumpet. So most of the sustainable noises are made by students rather than big manufacturers. The furniture industry’s attitude to the environment is beginning to look shameful when compared with the eco-efforts made by supermarkets and fashion brands - ie, really shameful. It appears it will take legislation to encourage them - an FSC-certified stick rather than a biodynamic carrot.

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