London Design Biennale 2018 Highlights

Today we had the pleasure of visiting the opening of the 2018 London Design Biennale – Emotional States, which will be running from 4th – 23rd September at Somerset House.

Designers across 40 countries, cities and territories show us what design means to them across installation and interactive design – in response to the theme ‘Emotional States’.

Here we share some of our highlights from the exhibition.

Greece – Disobedience
This huge skeletal structure leads the way to the opening of the Biennale – when a visitor walks the platform the structure responds by opening, a movement which feels more like a conscious ‘exhaling’ from a living organism. This is a great start to the exhibition and feels like walking inside a grand whale carcass which still has a pulse.

“A 17 metre-long kinetic wall made from a stainless steel spring skeleton and recycled plastic divides the Edmond J. Safra courtyard. As visitors step inside, this dynamic wall flexes and morphs with their movements; they have transgressed a boundary, transitioning from obedient spectator to disobedient actor”

Vietnam – Khải
Thảo Vũ founder of sustainable fashion label ‘Kilomet 109’ constructs a laboratory illustrating natural dyeing techniques composed over an indigo pool. The lab shows the steps of the dyeing process and also how Thảo Vũ reinterprets this to create new and sustainable textiles.

Pentagram – Masks (Emotional States exhibition identity)
Paper mask visuals created by Pentagram in response to the ‘Emotional States’ theme and drawing inspiration from Charles Darwin’s theory of universal emotions. Paper artist Andy Singleton was commissioned to create the masks based on Darwin’s behaviour profiles: Anger, Contempt, Disgust, Fear, Joy, Sadness and Surprise.

Qatar – The State Of You
Artist Aisha Nasser Al–Sowaidi explores the sense of nostalgia left behind in a city like Doha which is in a constant state of reinvention. Through her installation she explores different scents of emotional significance, visitors are invited to place their heads directly underneath the ceramic domes which release different scented smokes including tobacco, mango, rain and more.

Germany – Pure Gold (Upcycling and its emotional touch)
How do we change attitudes to the material value of our waste products? Germany explores waste and upcycling shifting the focus from industrial scale recycling to the smaller and more emotional redesign of everyday materials otherwise destined for landfill.

The Netherlands – Power Plant
The Netherlands offers a solution to our energy and food problems with the invention of a self sufficient greenhouse of the future. A unit which harvests food whilst also gathering the electricity needed to grow it.

Guatemala – Polopo
Guatemala’s installation brings the landscape and story of Santa Catarina Palopó to Somerset House – a town which is using art and design to develop a sustainable local economy. The town’s 800 houses will be painted using patterns inspired by local textiles – transforming the community to a cultural hotspot.

India – State of Indigo
This immersive installation draws attention to the labour-intensive nature of indigo farming – a process and product inextricably linked to India and also colonial trade and slavery. The installation places the visitor in the centre of the farm where the indigo leaves are painstakingly crushed, fermented, and mixed.

Switzerland – Body Of Us
Body of Us turns a microscope on the bacterial traces that we all leave behind, and explores whether new forms of social relationship can create a more ethical society.

“Any room coalesces with the beings that are in it,” says Body of Us curator Rebekka Kiesewetter. “Bacteria from building materials and human bodies interreact and grow in an unforeseeable manner, and so create new relationships between body and space.” In Body of Us, this process is illustrated by a vast petri dish containing bacteria from the room and the people who have visited it.

Mongolia – OYUNA X SFA
The Mongolian installation is devoted to all things cashmere and invites visitors to interact and play with the huge ‘Cashmere Cloud’. The installation explores the circles of cashmere production across all the entities and lives it touches, drawing a sensory connection from designed cashmere products through to the mountain goats and the nomads that rear them.