London Design Festival 2016 – V & A. The
Victoria and Albert Museum, the world’s leading museum of art and design, was
the official hub for the 2016 London Design Festival. The dynamic programme featured major commissioned
creative installations, talks, workshops and performances.
Above. Ben Evans director of the London Design Festival and Victoria Broackes curator of LDF for the V & A.
V & A -
Liquid Marble – Mathieu Lehanneur
Embracing the sculptural form and textural qualities
of marble, French multi-disciplinary designer Mathieu Lehanneur presented Liquid
Marble. This installation is part of a series by Leheanneur which explores the
materiality of marble. Using one vast slab of hand-polished black marble,
Lehanneur sculpted a surreal vision of the sea, mimicking the look and feel
of rippling water in in the historic interior of the Norfolk House Music Room.
The structure reflects and distorts itself, and the intense color of the
marble conjures up the depth of the ocean as if fossilized in stone.
V & A – The Green Room – Glithero
In a six storey stairwell in the West Wing of the
Museum, British-based design-duo Glithero presented The Green Room, a kinetic
installation centred around the passage of time. Designed in collaboration with
the Italian luxury watch maker Panerai, this dramatic and complex installation,
which could be viewed from multiple angles and levels explored the concept of
time through the careful arrangement of layers and lengths of silicone cord.
Glithero - Tim Simpson and Sarah van Gameren
The V & A Engineering Season - Elytra Filament Pavilion
A newly-commissioned installation by experimental
architect Achim Menges with Moritz Dorstelmann, structural engineer Jan
Knippers and climate engineer Thomas Auer, is situated in the Museum’s John
Madejski Garden, until November 6. Their first ever public commission in the UK, Elytra Filament
Pavilion explores the impact of emerging robotic technologies on architectural
design, engineering and making. Inspired by a lightweight construction
principle found in nature, the fibrous structures of the forewing shells of
flying beetles known as elytra, the Pavilion is an undulating canopy of
tightly-woven carbon fibre cells created using a novel robotic production
process.
Dylan Wood, Aikaterini Papadimitriou and Mortiz
Dorstelmann
V & A – Current Table – Caventou
Current Table is an intelligent living object that
uses the property of color to convert light into energy. Like plant photosynthesis, it reads light
levels and harvests energy. Caventou designed by Marjan van Aubel uses solar
technology to make everyday objects independent power sources.
Marjan van Aubel
V & A – Silk Leaf – Julian Melchiorri
Developed by the V & A’s Exhibition Road
Engineering Resident Julian Melchiorri, Silk Leaf is the first man-made
biological leaf prototype which harnesses natural photosynthesis to convert
carbon dioxide into breathable oxygen using only water and light. Photosynthesising
materials, such as Silk Leaf, can be used applications in interior design and
urban developments where carbon dioxide levels are high and breathable oxygen
is needed.
Julian Melchiorri
V & A –
Foil – Benjamin Hubert
British design entrepreneur Benjamin Hubert, of
experience design agency Layer, collaborated with iconic German brand Braun to
create Foil. The installation comprised
of 50,000 mirror-finish stainless steel panels on a 20-metre by 1.2-meter
undulating ribbon that ran down the lenght of one of the tapestry
galleries. Light from LEDs reflected off
the panelled surface to create slowly morphing and evocative patterns of
scattered light, moving across the walls and cielings. The installation was accompied by an
atmospheric soundscape that emanulated the fluid motion of the sculpture and
reflected light. The shape of the
metallic elements was informed by the precision engineered shape of Braun
shaver foil and the movement was inspired by the 360-degree movement of the
Braun shaver head.
Benjamin Hubert
V & A – Beloved - Tabanlıoglu Architects
Istanbul-based architecture firm Tabanlıoglu
Architects reinterpreted Sabahattin Ali’s classic 1943 novel Madonna in a Fur
Coat through an evocative, multi-sensory installation on a bridged gallery over
the Medieval and Renaissance Galleries.
“Madonna in a Fur Coat is one of the
greatest novels in Turkish literature. We wanted to introduce the book to a new audience
in London, as the book has recently been published in English translation for
the first time in its 73-year history.”
Murat Tabanlıoglu
Titled Beloved, the installation took the form of a
13-metre-long mirrored black box, with cracks in the surface through which
visitors could peer through. Within, atmospheric scenes from the novel were re-created
using cinematic techniques, physical objects, text, light and sound. Tabanlıoglu
Architects chose to locate the installation on the bridge, a metaphor for the
themes of the novel which deals with the relationship between a young Turkish
man and an enigmatic German woman, and is set between interwar period in two
cities: Berlin and Ankara.
Sabahattin Ali - Madonna in a Fur Coat - covers
Breakfast at the Victoria and Albert Museum
Sculpture in Britain Galleries 1600-1900
V & A – London Souvenirs
The London Design Festival and the V & A
collaborated with leading London-based designers to create a collection of contemporary,
design-led souvenirs celebrating the capital.
Above. Graphic agency Pentagram designed a set of
beermats and a bone china mug featuring playful phrases from the almost lost
language of cockney rhyming slang. Pentagram Partner Domenic Lippa has always
liked rhyming slang ever since his father brought home a slang phrase book -
for him it represents a quintessential part of London.
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