London Design Festival has wrapped its 23rd edition, with nine days of exhibitions, installations, workshops, and events drawing international audiences across the capital. From Bankside to Brompton, Chelsea to Dalston, nearly 300 partners and participants showcased work spanning experimental biodesign, AI-assisted creativity, heritage craft, and community-led making. This year’s programme placed a strong focus on wellbeing, memory, and human connection, while addressing urgent themes of sustainability and material innovation. Below, we highlight six projects that caught our eye while touring the city.

Aluminium furniture by Six Dots Design - photo by Seen PR

Six Dots Design at House of ICON

Among the standout presentations at House of ICON in Shoreditch Town Hall — one of the three venues forming the new Design London / Media 10 curated Shoreditch Triangle — was the sculptural work of Six Dots Design. The London studio has earned recognition for its all-aluminium furniture, defined by wavy silhouettes, sculptural forms and a playful aesthetic. Shown within a fabric-draped room in the venue’s moody ditch basement, founder Joseph Ellwood’s collection included lamps, chairs and tables. Each piece was cast at the studio’s recently acquired forge and finished at its east London workshop.

Mirroring Dialogue at Brompton Design District photo by Andy Stagg

Mirroring Dialogue by Tione Trice and Ronan McKenzie

As part of the Brompton Design District, Mirroring Dialogue formed a key strand of this year’s programme, curated by New York gallerist Alex Tieghi-Walker under the theme A Softer World. The exhibition placed cultural exchange at its core, foregrounding the work of artists, designers and makers “of the African diaspora and beyond” to showcase the breadth of creative talent shaping London today.

Expertly curated by Tione Trice and Ronan McKenzie, the show explored how objects can act as vessels of memory and resonance across cultures and geographies. Bringing together the work of 15 practitioners across disciplines — from furniture and textiles to ceramics and sculpture — the exhibition created a layered dialogue between material, form and cultural identity.

Grain Pile at Clerkenwell Fire Station - Photo By Richard Round Turner

Grain Pile by Ercol and Max Radford Gallery
At the Grade II-listed Clerkenwell Fire Station, the exhibition Grain Pile brought together Ercol and Max Radford Gallery in a celebration of timber’s versatility. Set against the building’s striking red-painted columns, six London-based designers were invited to create imaginative new pieces of furniture, from chairs and tables to cabinets and sculptural forms.

The participating designers — Andu Masebo, Eddie Olin, Joe Armitage, Jaclyn Pappalardo, Isabel Alonso and Lewis Kemmenoe — each developed works using the materials and machinery at Ercol’s expansive Buckinghamshire factory. The result was a series that fused contemporary design sensibilities with the legacy of one of Britain’s most established furniture makers, highlighting both experimentation and craftsmanship.

A Seat at the Table Van at Coal Drops Yard - Photo by Seen PR

A Seat at the Table by Design Everything
Challenging the conventions of a design exhibition, A Seat at the Table showcased chairs by 37 emerging designers in a mobile format that brought design directly to the festival’s design districts. Expertly housed in the back of a Luton removal van, the show travelled across London, popping up in various locations where the selection of seats cleverly became both exhibition pieces and platforms for evening workshops, talks and social gatherings.

The project was organised by Design Everything, a collective dedicated to supporting young designers and to explore inventive ways of making design accessible and navigate the high cost of taking part in trade shows and design festivals.

Objects with Live By

Ceramic designer and curator Emma Louise Payne opened the doors of her new London studio, Seventy-Six, for The Objects We Live By—an intimate exhibition exploring how design quietly shapes the rituals of daily life. Set within her parents' five-storey townhouse near Hyde Park, the show brings together works by Atelier Thirty Four, B.C. Joshua, Brogan Cox x Nat Maks, Daniel Mullin, David Irwin, Gather Glass, and Granite & Smoke, each creating site-responsive pieces in different rooms that blended seamlessly into the rhythms of a lived-in space. Eschewing traditional gallery conventions, objects appear under windows, beside armchairs, or on kitchen tables, inviting visitors not just to view design, but to experience it as part of the fabric of home.

The Drinks Lab at House of ICON Photo by Seen PR

The Drinks Lab by Odd Universe

The Drinks Lab by Odd Universe transformed a room in Shoreditch Town Hall into a playful social design experiment—part showroom, part sensory playground. Based between London and Vienna, the post-disciplinary studio moves fluidly across furniture, objects, fashion, and spatial design, creating bold, joyful work that celebrates identity and connection. Within the space, collections including CHUBB, The PEEPERS, and Odd Uniform sat alongside ceramic pieces by Tom Lawson Studio, while A Bar with Shapes for a Name led an immersive drinks science lab, inviting visitors to explore the world of aroma. The result was a vibrant collision of design and experience: fluid, unapologetic, and a little bit odd.