Clerkenwell Design Week 2015

This week London is abuzz with inspiration, as the annual Clerkenwell Design Week brings likeminded creatives together for three days of design. Here for its sixth year, showrooms, exhibition spaces and fringe events pop up across the area – with more creative businesses and architects per square mile than anywhere else on the planet, it’s the perfect venue.

With a focus on architecture, product, furniture and interior design this free festival is a design-lover’s dream – the creative talent on show represents an immense range of genius.

It would be impossible to attempt a summary of all featured, so here’s a selection of my best bits; for my credit card’s sake, it’s a good job I was only window shopping…

Dezeen Watch Store’s tongue-in-cheek promotion

Offering a great selection of timepieces in timeless designs, the Dezeen Watch Store has a strong reputation in the design circuit. However with competition on the horizon from the Apple Watch, Dezeen displayed some playful rivalry via its promotional materials, reading ‘It tells the time. Buy a normal watch’ and ‘Your mum can’t call you on it. Buy a normal watch’, amongst other mischievous jibes. Buyers even receive a complementary apple with any purchase.

H’s Pie chart system

At art college I was constantly told to “play eye-spy” and look for inspiration everywhere. Of course for designers this ‘anywhere inspiration’ is a fundamental talent; furniture company, H, celebrates this with its modular table system based on pie charts.

Another, more whimsical, example of ‘anywhere inspiration’ is Ray G Brown’s Floorboard Table; inspired by the rediscovered storage space that lies beneath.

The Urban Botanist

There is no shortage of greenery in CDW2015, which creates a lovely contrast between nature and the urban exhibition spaces across Clerkenwell. It’s a popular concept to merge urbanity and the natural world, to bring the outside inside, and The Urban Botanist is a masterclass in this. The cold, angular shapes provide beautiful little homes for plants, and these ones are a perfect size to bring into any interior space. Other great examples of natural inspiration include these indoor hanging baskets by boskke and Out of the Valley’s Sediment Tables.

Timorous Beasties’ Kaliedo Splatt

Truly striking a chord with my inner child, the splattered markings of this interiors line by Timorous Beasties caught my imagination; expressed as upholstery and wallpaper, the original illustrations are crafted by hand and then digitally printed.

Splats can be spotted elsewhere at Design Week, check out these fun fruit bowls and Dyke and Dean’s speckled kitchenware.

Fixperts

Using design for the greater good, Fixperts is a social project created to share knowledge and skills. Their ethos is admirable; believing the design process can empower people, giving them the confidence to help others. The Fixperts stand shows short videos of Fixperts in action, offers information on residencies and has a sign up sheet for people who need help fixing things. A wonderfully simple, but hugely powerful idea – design at its best.