About the London Design Festival 2013
The London Design Festival 2013 at the V&A was a nine day festival of contemporary design that celebrated London as the creative capital of the world.
As the hub of this annual Festival, the V&A is the first point of call for Festival visitors: the place to meet, pick up information, visit inspiring installations and events, and to enjoy the Festival atmosphere.
Throughout the Museum in 2013 there was a range of specially commissioned installations and displays to enjoy, as well as a broad programme of special events, talks and workshops that took place throughout the week in the bright, modern setting of the V&A's Sackler Centre, and in the Museum.
Find out more about the London Design Festival
Video: The London Design Festival at the V&A
View transcript of video
Victoria Broackes: The London Design Festival is a nine day celebration of London as the capital of design and we at the V&A are the hub. That means we are the first place people come to for information. We also make a major contribution to the festival with events, exhibitions and lots of special things going on.
Ben Evans: John Sorrell met and talked about this in 2002 and we both felt that it was quite odd that there wasn’t one and we agreed that if there was one that we should be the people who started it.
Sophie Reynolds: The V&A really is the world’s greatest museum of art and design and it makes a perfect fit. It’s a perfect home for the festival in London, we really open our doors to the design industries, the design professionals as well as to everyday visitors.
Victoria Broackes: You can literally arrive here at ten in the morning as the doors open and expect to be doing things all day long. Even into the evening with evening lectures, fun parties and so on.
Sophie Reynolds: This is where everything happens, all of the talks, the lectures, workshops and seminars.
John Sorrell CBE: London is a magnet for designers from all over the world, who set up shop here because it’s the most creative place to work. In fact since we started the London Design Festival back in 2003, eighty cities have followed our lead and setup their own versions of the London Design Festival.
Ben Evans: In terms of the projects at the museum. I think the Bouroullec brothers piece was very interesting, because remember you are in a museum of precious objects and your not allowed to touch anything – your certainly not allowed to climb on the installations.
Sophie Reynolds: It was an enormous textile installation that really invited visitors to relax and enjoy the space and to look at the Cartoons in a different way. I think that was really special.
We had Amanda Levete’s Timber Wave which was a huge and incredibly beautiful structure outside the front of the museum. That was a technological tour de force as well as a really impressive object to have outside the museum.Ben Evans: The sections here are all parts of picture frames and we thought what could we do that would be interesting with a picture frame. Stuarts idea was to, almost carpet the stairs case, with a path going through it and it was a very simple but a very impactful piece.
John Sorrell CBE: We are interested in the very very best of design in every single possible sense. That really is the future and that is also the future of London Design.
