A range of great projects at the V&A for this year's London Design Festival

Date
17 September 2014

We’ve already sung the praises of the V&A’s flagship London Design Festival project – Barber Osgerby’s extraordinary reflective installation in the Raphael Cartoons Gallery – but there are some other gems on offer at the spiritual home of the festival.

The most interesting is Candela, an immersive light sculpture in the Tapestry Gallery. It’s the work of a multidisciplinary team made up of product and furniture designer Felix de Pass, graphic designer Mike Montgomery and ceramicist Ian McIntyre and it’s a magnificently atmospheric creation. Walking into the quiet, still darkness of the gallery, the sculpture hums with electric green luminosity, and continuously changes as it rotates through its visual cycle. It feels like you’ve stumbled across the museum’s brain, surrounded by the priceless 15th Century tapestries.

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Felix de Pass, Mike Motngomery and Ian McIntyre: Candela (Photo by Ed Reeve)

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Felix de Pass, Mike Motngomery and Ian McIntyre: Candela (Photo by Ed Reeve)

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Felix de Pass, Mike Motngomery and Ian McIntyre: Candela (Photo by Ed Reeve)

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Felix de Pass, Mike Motngomery and Ian McIntyre: Candela (Photo by Ed Reeve)

Elsewhere it’s a coup for the LDF to have Zaha Hadid create a metallic sculpture for the museum’s courtyard pool. Crest is a delicate balance of design and engineering, assembled flat and then bent into shape in situ, a technique Zaha and her team had never used before.

Michael Anastassiades’ pearl-inspired collaboration with FLOS is pretty spectacular and David David’s Carousel Wall is one of the best uses of the V&A’s subway entrance for a a while.

Barber and Osgerby may be the star-turn but if you’re heading to the V&A for LDF it’s well worth hunting out some of these other projects too.

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Zaha Hadid: Crest (Photo by Ed Reeve)

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Zaha Hadid: Crest (Photo by Ed Reeve)

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Zaha Hadid: Crest (Photo by Ed Reeve)

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Michael Anastassiades: AMA 2014 (Photo by Ed Reeve)

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David David: Carousel Wall (Photo by Ed Reeve)

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David David: Carousel Wall (Photo by Ed Reeve)

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About the Author

Rob Alderson

Rob joined It’s Nice That as Online Editor in July 2011 before becoming Editor-in-Chief and working across all editorial projects including itsnicethat.com, Printed Pages, Here and Nicer Tuesdays. Rob left It’s Nice That in June 2015.

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