Ten Designers in the West Wing
London Design Festival presents ‘Ten Designers in the West Wing’, the work of an impressive list of renown designers, exhibiting in collaboration with their best clients.
Alphabeta, Luca Nichetto for Hem
Located in the Somerset House, the festival has selected ten major designers from various fields to showcase their design stories in a contemporary and innovative way. Reserving the newly renovated rooms at the west wing of the building, the designers get full freedom to make their story as complete and convincing as possible.
As for the English Drawing Room, designer Faye Toogood will be handling renovations herself. Creating the illusion of an abandoned country house, she uses charcoal and translucent plastic sheets to enhance space between four walls, reinforcing the idea of walking through a whole house.
Covering film and set design, award-winning designer Tino Schaedler joins forces with virtual reality director Nabil of United Realities, sending us on a trip to space by fusing vanguard technology aspects of storytelling.
For the keen book lovers amongst you, British designers Edward and Jay Osgerby will lure you into their intimate Reading Room where their furniture will be showcased, alongside their new book ‘One By One’.
Tabanlioglu Architects & Arik Levy Render
Faye Toogood
Optimist Design & United Realities
Many of the rooms will be interactive, transforming design into a creative experience. Industrial designer Arik Levy takes this a step further by not only creating interaction between the viewer and the room but also between art and architecture. Collaborating with architect duo Tabanlioglu, the artwork will let you explore the theme of transparency.
Other talent attending the exhibition will be Alex Rasmussen, Luca Nichetto, Jasper Morrison, Nendo, Patternity and Ross Lovegrove.
Mon-Wed & Sun 10am-6pm, Thu-Sat 10am-9pm
FREE
@L_D_F
Concept and Design: Creative Retail Therapy
Taking shopping from being a mere activity to a full-on experience is exactly what concept and design stores are all about – and with a whole lot of them popping up all over Europe’s major cities, there has never been a better time to treat yourself to a little creative retail therapy.
Taking shopping from being a mere activity to a full-on experience is exactly what concept and design stores are all about – and with a whole lot of them popping up all over Europe’s major cities, there has never been a better time to treat yourself to a little creative retail therapy.
With everything from shoes and chandeliers to fashion, furniture, and books, we have compiled a list of eight European concept design stores that are definitely worth visiting; even if you find yourself with a little less cash to splash, you can be sure that window shopping just became a whole lot more fun!
United Nude | Amsterdam
Successfully showcasing an eclectic range of footwear for both men and women, United Nude is a store with locations all over the world; however, set apart from all the rest is their flagship in Amsterdam which offers a unique shopping experience. Featuring the Wall of Light™, the store utilises LED technology to section their products into geometrically framed works of art.
Rooted in conceptual design and innovation, the store was founded by architect Rem D Koolhaas and Galahad JD Clark in 2003.
Uniforms for the Dedicated | Stockholm
With a strong focus on brand sustainability, Uniforms for the Dedicated are a clothing concept that combine playful design with environmental awareness. The brand was established in 2007 by a group of friends, taking inspiration from landscapes encountered in their various travels:
“For even though we often dream of the Colorado mountains we once hiked, we also hail from the minimalist mindset of Scandinavia”
Think rugged, wild, and well-worn interior decoration – the perfect backdrop for the brand’s minimalistic chic clothing.
Milk Concept Boutique | London
Based in Shoreditch, Milk is a concept boutique offering works by internationally recognised designers as well as presenting new collections from emerging talents. From furniture to fashion, Milk showcases a wide selection from brands based all over the world.
Milk also features a comprehensive blog on their website, keeping track of all things new and unique in the design world!
Based in Shoreditch, Milk is a concept boutique offering works by internationally recognised designers as well as presenting new collections from emerging talents. From furniture to fashion, Milk showcases a wide selection from brands based all over the world.
Milk also features a comprehensive blog on their website, keeping track of all things new and unique in the design world!
Droog | Amsterdam
Offering more than your average range of home accessories and furniture, Droog is a design store creating cutting edge products and collaborating with clients on projects and events all over the world. Co-founded and directed by curator and author Renny Ramakers, the Droog studio is rooted in the key principles of beauty and playfulness.
Droog also features a concept hotel in the heart of Amsterdam, where customers are invited to eat, drink, view exhibitions, and stroll in the ground’s eclectic garden, with the option of staying over after a long day of visual and mental stimulation!
Do You Read Me?! | Berlin
One for all you bibliophiles out there:
Do You Read Me?! is an independent book store offering a wide range of reading material sourced all over the world, from magazines to journals covering art, culture, music, fashion, photography and lots more in Berlin’s city centre. With a name like that, it’s definitely worth a visit!
The Tea House | London
A paradise for any tea lover, The Tea House is a beautiful independent store in London’s Covent Garden, offering a wide selection of tea leaves from all over the world.
The store’s display window warmly welcomes in passers-by all year round, showcasing some of the tea related accessories and products the store offers.
A paradise for any tea lover, The Tea House is a beautiful independent store in London’s Covent Garden, offering a wide selection of tea leaves from all over the world.
The store’s display window warmly welcomes in passers-by all year round, showcasing some of the tea related accessories and products the store offers.
Studiostore | Barcelona
Promoting design and creativity, Studiostore provides a platform for young designers from Barcelona and all over the world to showcase their products – the space also hosts exhibitions and conferences. And their website is pretty cool too!
Studiostore is the creation of architect and designer Lafede (Federica Sandretti), specialized in retail and lighting design.
Hoxton Street Monster Supplies | London
Offering ‘Bespoke and Everyday Items for the Living, Dead and Undead’, Hoxton Street Monster Supplies is the place to go for all those hard to find essentials (like Cubed Earwax and Zombie Fresh Mints!) Located a short walk away from Hoxton Overground station, Hoxton Street Monster Supplies guarantees fun for all the family (and service with a snarl).
Food for thought | Europe’s best designed restaurants
Here is a list of six brilliantly designed and accessible restaurants within Europe that have perfected their menus and design principles and will certainly have you coming back for more
When it comes to dining, in a continent surrounded by some of the most exciting culinary landscapes in the world, the well-versed foodie is definitely spoilt for choice. But it doesn’t take much to realise that the design of a restaurant will often have a far bigger impact on your dining experience than the food itself. Many foodies I know will deny the importance of ambience for their satisfaction, but décor for the restaurateur is quickly becoming a number one priority, and a priority that’s showing how we don’t always have to go for the often over priced, is-that-even-a-portion-sized restaurant, to fine, dine and wine. Here is a list of six brilliantly designed and accessible restaurants within Europe that have perfected their menus and design principles and will certainly have you coming back for more.
Short days, long winters, cold nights... The Danes know how to combat Denmark’s seasonal gloom with the art of hygge and its much talked about New Nordic cuisine, but it all comes at a price, and a price that’ll have you reaching deep into the pockets of your feather down jacket to foot the bill. But not at Höst.
Founded by the restaurant group Cofoco together with the local architecture and design duo Menu and Norm Architects, Höst is a traditional new Nordic restaurant, located in the heart of Copenhagen in the neighbourhood of Nansensgade with a modern twist. The restaurant has already won three international design awards including the World’s Best-Designed Restaurant and Best European Restaurant at London’s Restaurant & Design Awards.
Decked with its bare wooden furniture, subtle grey walls and soft lighting, Höst strips everything back to basics to complement the simple delights of Nordic cooking with a touch of modernism, resulting in something aesthetically and mouth wateringly delicious. Their menu includes dishes such asSmoked Trout with cauliflower-puré and pickled mushrooms with truffle and Norwegian lobster, juniper-pickled carrots, sea.buckthorn, juniper cream, hazelnuts and browned butter.
De Kas | Amsterdam
Adopting an environmentally friendly lifestyle whilst eating out might be easier than you imagined. In 2001, chef Gert Jan Hageman converted an eight-meter high greenhouse and former 1920s Municipal Nursery into a self-sufficient restaurant, which has been the source of inspiration to all grow-your-own-foodies since.
De Kas restaurant sources all of its own ingredients in the restaurant’s surrounding gardens and farmland nearby. With produce picked only hours before it is served, the restaurant has a three-course, Nordic inspired, fixed menu that changes according to the season and its availability to ensure that you are graced with a meal that promises to be fresher than fresh.
Kamerlingh Onneslaan 3, 1097 DE | +31204624562 | info@restaurantdekas.nl
Dishoom - King’s Cross | London
One day, an eccentric old Irani Café (born circa 1930, Bombay) made a long trip from Bombay in 1970 to London in 2010… Three years down the line and Dishoom have opened its third restaurant in King’s Cross, with an even better Bombay inspired design. Formally a railway transit shed dating back to the 1850s, the restaurant pays homeage to Bombay’s Irani cafes and is reminiscent of Mumbai’s Victoria Terminus that once passed between Britain and the Empire (London and Bombay).
Owned by cousins Shamil and Kavi Thakrar, Dishoom re-invents this period of Indian history in a beautifully designed space sprawling across four floors, furnished with colonial-style bentwood chairs, ornate tiles, ceiling fans and colonial styled décor. The restaurant has a reception and bar on the ground floor, a basement bar, a first floor dining room decked with curved seating overlooking a private dining area, and a chef’s open kitchen on the second floor where you can watch your food being prepared.
Chicken thigh meat steeped overnight in garlic and ginger, a vegetarian Paneer tikka marinated and gently charred with red and green capsicums or the Irani cafe favourite, Lamb keema and peas are just a few of the fine dishes Dishoom has to offer.
020 7420 9321 | 5 Stable Street, London N1C 4AB
Fame/Katerschmaus – Kater holzig | Berlin
Set in an old soap factory on the upper floor of the graffiti covered, art infused KaterHolzig complex, Katerschmaus is an open kitchen-restaurant turfing out great German inspired cuisine, boasting impressive views of the Spree right on the water and better still, with its own rooftop bar. With a menu that changes weekly, expect Argentinian steaks, abruzzo truffles and a culminating sugar boost that will settle your taste buds and have you ready to re-enter the revelry downstairs.
Oh, and no photos allowed, you’re cooler than that.
Holzmarktstraße 2510243 | fame@katerschmaus.de | +49 30 510 521 34
Kronenhalle | Zurich
A haven of art and comfort, Zurich’s Kronenhalle is a restaurant and bar with an astonishing display of 20thcentury art by the likes of Chagall, Mirò, Picasso, Braque and Matisse, that all belonged to one man, silk magnate Gustav Zumsteg. Since its opening in 1924, the restaurant has always been a refuge for art and allegedly a haven for figures such as Coco Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent, Pablo Picasso and Alberto Giacometti. Today its elegant menu complements the restaurant’s interior; minced veal ‘kronenhalle’ style, Chateaubriand and mousse au Chocolat to name a few.
The restaurant continues to attract an eclectic mix of people and is quickly becoming a hip hangout for Zurich’s students and its creative elite.
Rämistrasse 4, 8001 | +41 44 262 99 00
Nose2tail | Copenhagen
Valkendorfsgade 22, 1151 København K
Introducing, ‘Copenhagen’s first sustainable gastro pub’, a cosy, candlelit haven for all meat lover’s, set within the Kødbyen area of Vesterbro in Copenhagen –the ‘Meat Packing District’ - and in what was a former butcher’s house.
Inspired by the British phenomenon River Cottage, the restaurant prides itself for using locally sourced produce and evolves around sustainability, using every part of the slaughtered animal (hence its name, nose to tail) to minimise waste. The menu is divided into three sections, the fish, entrails and the animal. No hidden agendas just honest, tasty, eco friendly food that gives a modern twist to the pub classics. Organic free range pulled pork, organic burgers made from free range beef, deviled organic free range eggs, to name a few. And if that wasn’t enough, the restaurant houses a great selection of local, Danish beers too.
Valkendorfsgade 22, 1151 København K | +45 33 93 50 45
ArtEZ Academy of the Arts presents: Tessa Groenewoud
Tessa Groenewoud graduated from ArtEZ Academy of the Arts, Arnhem, specialising in footwear design
Tessa Groenewoud graduated from ArtEZ Academy of the Arts, Arnhem, specialising in footwear design. She has a strong interest in product design, material manipulation and attentions to detail, and is currently interning at United Nude, in China.
What inspired you to become a footwear designer?
Initially, I was interested in product design. I really like the aesthetics of product design, and then during my time at school I started becoming interested in shoes, and their functional properties.
What techniques do you prefer to use when designing?
I think the appeal of my shoes comes from the techniques I use, and the practicality of the piece. I have a fascination with form transformation, when something changes when you touch it or turn it inside out. It’s very important that it is not merely about the aesthetics – they come from the functionality.
What makes your work unique?
I think my work is minimalistic; I use a lot of graphic lines and industrial details, I feel this style makes me stand out.
You have worked with a variety of materials, one of them being leather. What was it about this material that attracted you to it?
For my ‘Craft the Leather’ project I used vegetable tanned leather, I used this material because it had the capability to be manipulated when wet. I folded the material into shapes, and because of the thickness of the material it held this particular shape, which worked extremely well for this project.
For your ‘Assemble’ project each shoe represents a technique based on the principle of connection, shape memory or compression – how did you incorporate these elements into your designs?
The shoe is about the connection between industrial parts, I thought I could use this to combine the shoe with the wedged heel. I really like the traditional leather, combined with a high-tech plastic material. This project was really about the construction of the shoe.
What techniques/styles would you like to explore next?
I’m really interested in injection molding and silicon printing. I think in the future I would really like to develop my own collection, and it would be interesting to develop these techniques.
What motivates you to design?
Nowadays, shoes are not only about the look of the shoe, it’s about different forms of producing shoes and how practical they are. It’s really motivational for me, as I am so interested in the practicality of shoes.
