Inside Sketch’s ‘Crafted Wonder’ Installation at the London Design Festival

Sketch, the London dining and art destination founded by Mourad Mazouz, celebrated its 20th anniversary last year. Over the two decades, its spaces have been designed and redesigned by such luminaries as Noé Duchaufour-Lawrance, Yinka Shonibare, and Interior Design Hall of Famer India Mahdavi. Sketch also participates in the annual London Design Festival, creating temporary immersive installations. This year’s iteration, titled “Crafted Wonder,” transformed three rooms into boundary-pushing, international examples of the handmade. It began at the entry, where French rug maker La Manufacture Cogolin covered the floor and arches with a golden pattern derived from 1930’s gouache drawings by the late fashion illustrator Christian Bérard. The mode shifted to this century in the bar: Multi­dis­ci­pli­nary British artist Julian Carter forged what he calls a “three-dimensional line drawing” from steel rods. Finally, in the lounge, Czech glass manu­fac­turer Lasvit presented a special gold version of its Herbarium chandelier by Mária Čulenová Hostinova to complement the lush botanical setting.

12 Highlights from the London Design Festival 2022

Reaction is a heady part of design—and provocation is in the air at this year’s London Design Festival (LDF), where, perhaps more than usual, installations, exhibits and new products prompt thought, intrigue and discussion. The 20th edition of the festival is underway, concluding September 25 and includes product showcase Design London, which made its debut last year, and 12 “Design Districts.” In particular, the Brompton Design District—under the theme ‘Make Yourself at Home’ – shined.

From an exhibit breaking down the barriers of the traditional flowerpot to a chair upholstered in woven camouflage nets designed and used in Ukraine, to a cheeky look at the challenges of cohabitating, here are 12 of our favorite highlights from LDF 2022.

1. “Martino Gamper: No Ordinary Home” by Martino Gamper and Friends

There’s too much predictability around what holds a plant. “Martino Gamper: No Ordinary Home” breaks down run-of-the-mill flowerpot barriers, presenting shoots of green life in all sorts of surprising vessels. Even better? They’re born from existing items in the Martino Gamper archives and conceived by a long roster of talented designers.

2. “Into Sight” by Sony Design

A journey into virtual reality minus the goggles, “Into Sight” by Sony Design takes visitors into a steadily changing digital world. Packed full of color, light and sound, the multimedia display blurs the line between the here and now and the digital universe.

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3. Gropius Low Chair Military Edition by NOOM in collaboration with Nataliya Bakulina and Antonina Latayko

Woven camouflage nets developed by volunteers for the Ukrainian Military upholster the Gropius chair, which has a net base incorporating 4,000 knots of green, black, gray, beige and brown cloth.

4. “Inky Dhow Universe” by Bethan Gray for Sketch London

Three installations transform Sketch London—one of London’s most Instagrammable restaurants and a hotspot for the well-heeled design crowd—through October 16. Celebrating her signature blue and white pattern, “Inky Dhow Universe” by Bethan Gray sends cobalt blue and white stripes across walls, floors, furniture and accessories. The 45 custom “flickering candles” in “Through the Looking Glass,” an elaborate chandelier by Moritz Waldemeyer, exemplify how far the LED has come. In homage to the restaurant’s name, Tannaz Oroumchi presents “Change of Form,” a collection of over 50 large-scale architectural drawings.

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5. Contemporary Vanity by Joseph Ellwood for Six Dots Design

As sustainable materials go, aluminum receives high marks (at the end of its lifecycle, it can be recycled again and again). The laser-cut aluminum table, screen, mirror, chair and hanging rail in the Contemporary Vanity collection are an elegant and sophisticated exploration of the light, sustainable material. 

6. Swivel by Sabine Marcelis

Solid marble is not usually the perch available for a lunchtime meal-deal retreat. In luxurious contrast with Central London’s 34-story Brutalist tower Centre Point, outdoor installation “Swivel” by Sabine Marcelis at St. Giles Square beckons with the beauty of the natural stone, provided by Solid Nature.

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7. “Two Kettles, No Sofa,” by James Shaw and Lou Stoppard for Seeds Gallery

Strong opinions and different tastes collide when cohabitating is all you want to do. In “Two Kettles, No Sofa,” at Seeds Gallery, partners James Shaw (a designer) and Lou Stoppard (a writer), explore the challenge of compromise and negotiation, with a mix of Shaw’s design objects and historical design classics. The apt pairing also includes a short story, written by Stoppard.

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8. Gypsum Light Sculpture 7 by Voukenas Petrides for Gallery FUMI

Part of a series of gypsum and LED light sculptures, Gypsum Light 7 has two glowing mouths recalling misshapen Pac-Mans.

9. Raiz by Studioilse for Ames

It takes weeks for Colombian artisans to hand-make each conical ceramic shade for the black clay, Iraca palm leaf fiber, and galvanized and powder coated tubular steel Raiz lighting collection by Studioilse. Handwoven palm fiber detailing likewise hails from the country’s rich craft history. With pendant, table and floor lamp, the collection marks the manufacturer’s first foray into lighting.

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10. Disco Gourds by Bethan Laura Wood for 1882 Ltd.

With far-flung influences ranging from historic gourd painting to 1960s party foods and medieval stained-glass windows in her hometown of Stoke-on-Trent, England, Bethan Laura Wood envisioned a ceramic collection. Disco Gourds consists of a platter and a bowl—each in two sizes—employing the slip lining effect of raised, hand-painted patterns and adornments recalling gourd stems.

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11. Gondo by Elif Erguvan

A bespoke shoe shop on Savile Row, one of London’s most exclusive fashion streets, serves as backdrop for Elif Erguvan’s debut collection of tables, seating and lighting handcrafted in her native Istanbul. Composed of four conical striped legs of Alexander Black and Green Diabaz stone, the Gondo table recalls the “colorful, striped mooring poles the gondoliers of Venice use to secure their boats on the Grand Canal,” the designer notes. The table top is layered and rounded burgundy glass. On view at Arthur Sleep.

12. “The Wonder Room” by Achille Salvagni and Toyine Sellers

Taking cues from the gold-painted wood throne excavated from the tomb of the Egyptian king Tutankhamun, the Tutankhamun chair, upholstered in the fabric Indi Or Cinq Cent Quatre-Vingt is one of 10 pieces resulting from the union of a furniture designer (Salvagni) and a textile designer (Sellers). It’s featured in the exhibit “The Wonder Room,” on view at the Achille Salvagni Atelier.

14 New Product Highlights from the London Design Festival 2021

Why have one design district when you can have 10, each with a different flavor? So thought the organizers of the 19th edition of the London Design Festival, which wrapped up last weekend. Despite some travel difficulties due to varying Covid-19 quarantine regulations, the U.K.’s biggest design event— organized to promote London as “the design capital of the world”—was jammed with product launches and installations and even welcomed visitors to new permanent destinations, such as a retail and dining initiative celebrating the best of Nordic and Japanese design and cuisine. From a chair with a frog eye-like back to a diagonal faucet in a new showroom with a criminal past to furnishings first seen in a new sushi restaurant, here are 14 of our favorite new products discovered at the London Design Festival 2021.

Afternoon Tea by Lara Bohinc for Bohinc Studio

Three floors of a London townhouse were decked out with the Afternoon Tea collection by Lara Bohinc for Bohinc Studio—a nine-piece line of curvy experimental furnishings. Described by the designer as “almost froglike,” the powder-coated steel Trevor dining chair has two round upholstered cushions—frog eye-like—forming its back.

Meanwhile, the Kipfel Marble desk boosts any working from home experience to another level with the sublime luxury of rosa portugalo marble in a form inspired by an Austrian pastry.

Stay by Nika Zupanc for Sé

In a textile flourish—suitable fireworks to introduce its new London showroom—furniture manufacturer Sé teamed up with French fabric house Lelièvre Paris. Shown here are the Stay dining chairs by Nika Zupanc for Sé, now upholstered in Lelièvre textile.

Rettangolo K by Gessi

On the ground floor of a former courthouse built in 1782, Casa Gessi is the new 5,400-square-foot flagship showroom space for tap manufacturer Gessi. Located in the heart of the Clerkenwell design district, the heritage building preserves the remnants of former holding cells.

Rettangolo K, a redesign of a best-selling model toasting the diagonal line, was among new taps featured.

Lounge by Max Lamb for Vaarnii

Wild-grown Scots Finnish pine is the material behind all 12 pieces in the first collection produced by freshly launched furniture brand Vaarnii, also hailing from Finland.

Scooping out convex recesses gave rise to the hardy Lounge chair by Max Lamb. The collection was featured in “Back + Forth,” an exhibition at Twentytwentyone gallery.

Iso by Jasper Morrison for Isokon Plus

The crumbling beauty of an 18th-century London mansion set the scene for designs from eight different furniture brands at design destination 14 Cavendish. Cantilevered plywood lounge chair Iso by Jasper Morrison for Isokon Plus demonstrates what experimentation with the orientation and thickness of veneer layers can achieve with a humble material.

N-SC01 by Norm Architects for Karimoku Case Study

The minds behind furniture brand Karimoku Case Study had the bright idea to debut furnishings incorporated into the interior of a new high-end sushi restaurant at Nordic and Japanese retail and dining venue Pantechnicon, also new.

The rounded form of the N-SC01 side chair by Norm Architects pays tribute to the distinctive architecture of Blue Bottle Coffee, a coffeeshop in Yokohama, Japan.

Hempcrete by Smarin Studio for Super Nature

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Hemp shiv, a waste product from the hemp fiber industry, is merged with hydrated lime to form sustainable material Hempcrete by Smarin Studio. In the exhibition “Hemp-Clay-Lime: Urban Seating” at the King’s Cross Design District, Smarin demonstrated the material as hexagonal outdoor seating, in collaboration with Super Nature, the King’s Cross sustainable initiative.

“Off Grid” by Custhom

To dramatically debut Wallpaper by You, its custom wallpaper service launching October 1, wallpaper manufacturer Custhom commandeered the entire second floor of London’s Building A2 by 6a Architects. There, a maze-like diamond grid showcased the brand’s 100 percent FSC-certified paper pulp wallpaper.

400 table and chairs by Mirrl

Resilient solid-surfacing material is applied to birch plywood to form the 400 table and chair by Mirrl, featured in the exhibition “The Future of Home,” highlighting 15 Scotland-based design studios. The table is topped with Fossil, the design studio’s most recent surface material.

Riverside by Juan Franco and Juan Sierra

The cherry wood Riverside bench by Juan Franco and Juan Sierra provides multifunctional opportunities with built-in trays, dividers, and containers. The bench is featured in “Discovered,” an exhibition highlighting wood furnishings by young designers on view through October 10 at the Design Museum. Each designer was allowed to choose from one of four sustainable U.S. hardwoods: red oak, cherry, hard maple, or soft maple. The exhibition is presented by Wallpaper* magazine and the American Hardwood Export Council.

”Medusa” by Tin Drum

Jutting out from the ceiling, floors, and walls, virtual installation “Medusa,” by Tin Drum was presented in the Raphael Court of the Victoria & Albert Museum.

To see the digital visualization, a Landmark project presented by the London Design Festival and produced in collaboration with Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto, visitors peered through transparent display devices.

Vima by Bert Frank

The geometric shapes and detailing of the Art Deco period converge with modern day technology in the brass, acid-etched glass, and alabaster Vima collection by Bert Frank. The collection consists of two pendant lights, a wall light, and floor and table lamps. 

Press by Tom Dixon

Thick ribbed glass—think vintage buoys—embodies the geometric shapes of the Press light collection by Tom Dixon. To create the forms, sturdy enough for outdoor use, molten glass is pressed in iron molds.

Butter Stool by Marco Campardo

Manafesting the artisanal capabilities of plastic, the Butter stool by Marco Campardo is made of hot polyurethane resin poured into molds. It was presented in the exhibition “Joy” at gallery Seeds.

10 Questions With…Arthur Mamou-Mani

Interior Design sat down with Mamou-Mani to learn more about his Fortnum & Mason installation, how he ended up building a temple at the Burning Man festival, and what he is 3D-printing for the renovation of his home. 

Interior Design: How did you choose the distinctive beehive geometry of “Mellifera: The Dancing Beehives,” your installation in the atrium of Fortnum & Mason?

Arthur Mamou-Mani: Fortnum & Mason is an iconic, very British store near Piccadilly Circus in London. When we visited, we were invited upstairs where—surprising and surreal for the middle of London—they have beehives. Fortnum & Mason produces their own honey and auctions it off to raise money to help bees in general, which I thought was really great, so we decided to do a project that would reflect this initiative.

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“Mellifera” consists of 50 giant beehive-type modules 3D-printed from bioplastics made from fermented sugar. They’re almost 16 inches wide and around two feet high—that’s the maximum size that we could print—and suspended from cables. In the shop’s 56-foot-high atrium, they rise from the ground all the way to the skylight which is close to where the bees actually are. They start in tight together and then they slowly get more spaced out as if they were pulled by the skylight. There’s a beautiful motif in the atrium that was inspired by champagne flutes, so we tried to reproduce the geometry. We have a crusher in our studio, so we are constantly crushing our bioplastic waste and reusing it—bioplastics can be reused about five times before you have to compost. However, this piece will be auctioned off and 25 percent of the profits will go directly to a charity.

ID: How does this project compare to “Conifera,” your installation presented by COS in Milan in 2019, which also used repetition of 3D-printed objects?

AM: For the COS project, which was more about the craft, we used a much larger printer because the available space was larger and outside. Since “Mellifera” is within the interior of a luxury department store, we wanted to demonstrate another aspect of our technology. We wanted to produce a piece that can show that 3D-printing can produce silky smooth finishes that appear really refined. We also used two smaller printers, working nonstop, printing the entire project in-house through FabPub. It’s quite a challenge to print that many pieces so fast. For “Conifera,” we had to use these little pellets; for “Mellifera,” it was filaments which are much more delicate and can print at a much higher resolution. The result looks almost like it’s made of silk.

ID: Your installation for the Burning Man festival in 2018 was an internet sensation.

AM: I teach at the University of Westminster and we started going to Burning Man with our students. Of course, it’s often seen as a festival or a party, but actually it has a lot of underlying principles like leaving no trace and radical self-reliance. Imagine a city that builds itself in a week and then unbuilds itself. That’s exactly what the idea of circular economy is—thinking about the afterlife of things and understanding where your waste is going. There’s something really interesting about being in a city where you have to deal with your own waste, it makes you think of the bigger picture. Galaxia, at 32,000 square feet and almost 200 feet wide and 65 feet high, was built by 180 volunteers in 18 days in the desert, fully self-funded through crowdfunding. It was sort of a secular space without a religion but was used as a temple. People were placing offerings or writing inside the space. It was a really wonderful, unusual type of space in a city that’s itself unusual.

ID: What else have you worked on recently?

AM: During the COVID crisis, there was a shortage of masks in the U.K. because they were being shipped from other countries like China. With FabPub, it’s almost like having a mini factory in the middle of the city, so we could produce masks at cost for hospitals. The situation really proved that having your own 3D-printers could actually help with the production of things, despite the blockages from a crisis like COVID. By decentralizing factories, everyone can have a little factory nearby. In a way, COVID was a great moment to show the importance of digital fabrication. This has empowered designers to produce in-house as opposed to rely on mass production.

We always try and think about good local materials or something that could help people see things differently. In Saudi Arabia, they have so much sand and deserts. Just before COVID-19, we printed “Sandwaves,” which we designed with Chris Precht of Austria-based firm Precht. It was urban furniture [created] using sand and a binder. The structures were almost like three-dimensional leafs—natural structures that seemed to have thickened where they needed to thicken. We used the computer to help simulate structural performance. Using a lattice-like structure, the computer helped us understand where we need more or less thickness. So we created these almost natural-looking curved benches that were playing with local vegetation like palm trees and dancing around like waves, hence “Sandwaves.”

ID: What’s upcoming for you?

AM: We’re doing a reclaimed timber tower in Bali, Indonesia. There was an unused timber structure bridge from colonial times. We undid all that and then reused the material to build anew.

In October, we’ll be doing a piece for the atrium of The Design Museum in London as well, also printed in bioplastics. For a project at the new headquarters for Orange, a large telecommunications company in France, we’re doing something in steam-bent timber.

ID: Instagram suggests you have a major renovation underway at home.

AM: My wife, Sandy, and I are renovating our Victorian home in Stoke Newington in East London, and some of the exciting things I’m sharing via my Instagram stories. Replacing the back facade with reclaimed timber from old train tracks, we opened it up to the courtyard. To gain light, we dug below the street level. This is the first time that I have focused so much on an interior and it’s so hard. We’re replacing plaster boards and doing everything with clay. There are pipes with ducts full of hot water, and then you have clay render on top of that—so the walls are like heated skin but made of earth. Clay is the most environmental thing there is—no paint, no toxic material. Plus, it absorbs and purifies the air and heats up a space in a uniform way. A lot of what we are using is from research that we did for eco materials. We have recycled glass tiles in the bathroom and we 3D-printed the balustrade to our staircase. The project is a proper experiment into an environmental home, which is a bit crazy because it was very expensive, but we’re trying to see what is affordable and what is not in order to learn how we could bring this to people.

ID: How did your childhood or formative years influence your design thinking?

AM: I grew up in Paris, and my dad is a computer scientist and my mom is an ecologist….yes, now my career makes sense. She worked for the Ministry of the Environment and he had a computer science company. I was also really lucky to study at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London, which has teachers with a very different way of thinking who taught me that anything can be a source of inspiration—not necessarily existing designs or other architects, [but] something like nature. It’s really important to have those teachers that kind of tell you that you can think beyond the box.

As for becoming an architect, there’s not that many jobs for someone into science and math and art with an equal passion for all. It was always an obvious vocation for me, although no one in my family is an architect.

ID: Who in the industry do you particularly admire?

AM: I’m just back from Arles, France where I saw the new Luma Arles tower by American architect Frank Gehry…It’s incredible how Gehry—probably the only architect that is known by the general public as a name—can connect. In Arles, people are just in awe; he really transformed the city from one people might not necessarily know to a place they want to go. It’s not just about his building, but also how he celebrates the heritage of a space. This tower refers back to Vincent van Gogh’s brush stroke because he painted most of his paintings in Arles—Gehry celebrates that through the use of the bricks.

ID: What are you reading?

AM: “Art as Experience” by John Dewey, an old book that I just recently came across on the same trip at the Foundation Vincent van Gogh Arles. It’s about how art should not be put on a pedestal because it is part of our everyday life, and part of all the objects that we see. You can have an artistic or an aesthetic emotion in front of things that are not necessarily put in a museum or celebrated as art. I find that idea really powerful because I feel like we tend to disconnect the artistic and the scientific…or determine who is an artist type or who is not the artist kind of person. I’ve always thought these were arbitrary barriers that prevent us from being creative or being an active participant. In the stuff we buy, for example, we become quite passive consumers. This book is expressing the idea that we can all be artists, that we can all have an artistic approach to life.

Burning Man has this notion of ‘radical participation,’ so that there’s no spectator in the city and everyone is the artist of the city. I find it really important to not disconnect people from what is otherwise seen as artistic creation versus something we can all create together.

ID: Do you have a secret you can share?

AM: I’ve probably done over 700 Google reviews. I don’t know why, but I really enjoying doing them and now I’m a ‘Level Seven’ reviewer. I’m obsessed! They’re basically my travel diary. Sandy is a real foodie, and she always tells me: ‘I don’t want you to buy me anything, just experiences.’ This is one way to keep track of all these experiences.