Dezeen's must-see exhibitions and events at London Design Festival 2025

In the run-up to this year’s London Design Festival, we have selected installations, exhibitions and other standout projects taking place across the city from 13 to 21 September.

Located in 10 design districts spread throughout the capital, London Design Festival (LDF) will be held over nine days.

The 23rd edition of the festival will feature a wide variety of events, from design fairs and product launches to shows by emerging designers and students.

See the Dezeen Events Guide’s digital guide to London Design Festival 2025 for more information on the many events taking place all over the city and read on for our top picks:

Key installations

Public installations are an LDF staple. This year’s highlights will include What Nelson Sees by designer Paul Cocksedge, a freestanding structure in Trafalgar Square made of sky-facing telescopic tubes. Visitors will be invited to look through the tubes and experience the city through the vantage point of the square’s landmark monument, Nelson’s Column.

Designer Lee Broom will present a chandelier-like installation on the nearby Southbank called Beacon, made from discarded glass fragments arranged to reference the area’s brutalist architecture.

At the V&A museum in South Kensington, artist Roo Dhissou will unveil Heal, Home, Hmmm, a clay pavilion constructed using traditional Punjabi mud building techniques. The museum’s garden will also feature a 2,000-tile installation by artist Alicja Patanowska called The Ripple Effect, designed to explore the hidden consequences of copper mining.

An emphasis on materials

Interrogating how we use materials has become intrinsic to LDF’s programming, led by its “cornerstone fair” Material Matters. This year, the show will take place at Holborn’s Space House in central London and bring together works from a range of brands and designers who explore the myriad roles materials play in our lives.

Just around the corner, the Aram Gallery will present Beyond Foam, an exhibition curated by research group EcoLattice, which unpacks the design industry’s addiction to conventional polyurethane foam in furniture-making.

Over in Walthamstow, the Biofab Fair will showcase work from the creatives who are testing the boundaries of biomaterials, from protein-spun textiles to bacterial-based pigments.

Also in east London, industrial design agency Morrama will take over Hackney Depot with its exhibition From the Ground Up, which also focuses on bio-based material alternatives.

Collectible design continues to grow

LDF’s slew of collectible design shows planned for this year highlights the growing global appetite for unique but functional furniture and accessories.

Among the offerings is Soft World, Sharp Edges by designer Charlotte Taylor, presented as part of South Kensington’s annual Brompton Design District. The show will feature pieces by designers including Natalia Criado and Silvia Prada, in an exhibition that playfully reframes the gallery as a bedroom.

Across town at the Grade II-listed Clerkenwell Fire Station, Max Radford Gallery will present the Grain Pile show in collaboration with timber brand Ercol. Informed by Ercol products, designers including Andu Masebo and EJR Barnes will display pieces that reimagine what wooden furniture can be in their own ways.

Close by in Hackney Wick, design brand Béton Brut will present Unbound, an exhibition at its gallery space billed as the first major retrospective of the late iron artist Salvino Marsura.

Over in west London, Ladbroke Grove’s Carpenter’s Workshop Gallery will present Lightness of Form, an exhibition created by designer Terence Woodgate and engineer and Formula One racing car designer John Barnard to examine the relationship between their two disciplines.

Spotlight on emerging designers

London’s biggest design festival is always a chance to discover some of the best new names paving their way in the industry.

Following a successful debut show at last year’s LDF, creative platform Design Everything will return with A Seat at the Table, a mobile show presenting chairs by a roster of emerging designers installed in the back of a Luton van. The format was chosen to convey the challenges involved in securing locations for young creatives to show their work during established design weeks, and the participants were selected via an open call.

Object 74, a group of emerging designers and recent Royal College of Art graduates, will unveil its eponymous Shoreditch exhibition of furniture and other design objects for the home.

Over at Bill Amberg Studio in Park Royal, Kingston University product design master’s graduates will present Next Generation in Experimental Leather, a curated selection of works-in-progress leather prototypes created to push the boundaries of the material.

A group of younger school students aged 14-18 will also get involved by unveiling the results of This Bench has Legs, an after-school club run by creative collective Store, where the students designed and prototyped a public bench for Camden using local waste streams found in the King’s Cross area.

Best of the rest

There will be plenty more to see across the city, including a handful of other highlights in east London.

The inaugural Design London Shoreditch is a new design fair for LDF, following the 2023 cancellation of London Design Fair, which used to take place during the festival. Featuring exhibitors ranging from 2LG Studio to students from Central Saint Martins, the new fair will be held at three locations across the Shoreditch Design Triangle.

Close by in Aldgate, the creative platform Museum of Unrest will present When Design Fights Back: The Right to Protest. The exhibition of posters, installations and “the world’s largest screenprint” will explore how graphic art and design have been used throughout history to protect the human right to protest, which the platform described as “under increasing threat from governments worldwide, including western democracies and in London itself”.

Design collective Heirloom will also unveil a playful exhibition at its Mile End studio called Out of Orifice. Featuring 36 varied products and prototypes that go inside our bodies, the show will urge LDF visitors to question whether there is a vast difference between objects designed for medicine and those designed for pleasure.

Tours, talks and workshops

For those seeking interactive events, head over to the Design Museum in Kensington, where designer Bethan Laura Wood will guide visitors in making seaweed streamers from laminated paper in a project informed by her 2017 installation for Hull City of Culture.

Zaha Hadid Design associate director Margarita Valova will offer a guided tour of Fulham’s undulating Roca London Gallery, designed by Zaha Hadid Architects in 2011.

Also in west London, Carpenter’s Workshop Gallery will host screenings of two films and a Q&A at Ladbroke Hall called Eileen Gray: A Legacy Unveiled, dedicated to the life and work of the modernist Irish designer.

The London Design Festival takes place from 13 to 21 September 2025. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.

The post Dezeen’s must-see exhibitions and events at London Design Festival 2025 appeared first on Dezeen.