The Weekender: London Design Festival special

Date
23 September 2011

The Weekender is a creature of simple needs. Nourishment (actual and intellectual) the odd bit of me-time and burping twice a day. This week those ESSENTIALS have played second fiddle to the fantabulous delights on offer at the London Design festival. And you know something? Breaking the routine FELT GOOD (“burp”).

Best of the blog

LDF has certainly lived up to all expectations with a dizzyingly diverse array of delicious design dalliances. Sebastien Bergne’s Lego Greenhouse was a joy to behold, the crazy good V&A offerings left us giddy and Reddress in Bethnal Green stunned us good and proper.

Best of the rest

We enjoyed John Pawson describing his St Paul’s installation Perspectives as “Harry Potter-ish” on The New York Times blog, felt our patriotic spirits rise reading Lee Broom’s excellent piece for The Telegraph about British design and loved this Creative Review article about Pentagram’s angular approach to the LDF’s visual identity.

Tweet of the week

“Ahhh London Design Festival… Networking, Booze… Yeah. Networking. It’s all about the networking…”
Something we have long suspected, confirmed by enigmatically Twitter-handled @p______ aka Paul Kardous.

Art machine in the shape of a giant dog of the week

Noma Bar’s show has had some hype, but this super video from Crane TV really cut to the heart of the man and his massive talent.


Places we wish there was a giant dog of the week

Just imagine if all electricty pylons in Britain were the shape of a massive poodle? We wouldn’t even notice the rain. As it is these designs for the pylons of the future (currently on display at The V&A) are pretty good too…

Map of the week

Lots of talk in our LDF interviews about how the London Underground map is a real design icon, but this map showing how internet cables connect under the sea took the cartographic biscuit.

Description of the week

One of Dominic Wilcox’s magnificent watch sculptures is subtitled: “A man so engrossed in his iPhone that he fails to notice a monkey balanced on the head of a weightlifting boy standing on the arm of an elderly rollerskater.”

Tenuous London Design festival connection of the week

Ok hands up, this has nothing to do with the LDF. But want to see an angry penguin make a grrown man fall over? Course you do…

Mega HUGZ and parsnips (ordinary size) to one and all.

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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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