by Fabio Colturri
From 13 to 21 September, design unfolded across London through 10 vibrant districts and hundreds of creative spaces. These are the highlights we brought back.
Share
- 0shares
Now in its 23rd edition, London Design Festival returned from 13 to 21 September 2025 to reaffirm the city’s status as a cultural powerhouse, a hub for creative industries, and a meeting point for innovation, business and experimentation.
This year, the festival sprawled across 10 vibrant Design Districts, each with a distinct identity shaped by its local creative community. From the industrial edges of Park Royal to the cultural hotspots of Mayfair and Bankside, each district curates its own programme of exhibitions, talks, workshops, and late-night openings. Shoreditch remains a magnet for design professionals with its expanded trade showcases, while Brompton and Chelsea offer refined storytelling and material-focused installations. New districts like EC1 and Fleet Street highlight London’s ongoing evolution, bridging legacy and contemporary design thinking.
Gallery
Open full width
Open full width
Whether you’re interested in collectible furniture, architectural materiality, community craft, or speculative installations, the festival offers a window into what design can do today and where it’s headed next. Let’s dive into the product highlights from our visit:
London Design Festival 2025 – 9 Highlights:
- Holm Table by Isomi
- Join Collection by Foster + Partners Industrial Design for Isokon
- WA Table Lamp by Akasaki & Vanhuyse
- CorpusForma by Maria Bravo for EcoLattice
- Venustas Chair by OLIVIAKL
- Kora X Coffee Table by Secolo
- Sofa Bed by SLOWE Living®
- Wake by Heatherwick Studio and Tala
- SHRINX Lounge Chair by Boris Berlin for +Halle
Holm Table by Isomi
This table balances refined materials with precise detailing. The base is sculpted from natural cork, giving a warm and tactile presence, while the top is made of Richlite, a dense surface material composed of recycled paper and bio-resin. Richlite is FSC-certified, non-porous, and heat-resistant, with a look and feel close to stone. Holm is designed for full disassembly, with integrated cable management and optional cut-outs. It comes in various sizes and finish combinations.
Isomi, founded in 2011 and is based in Clerkenwell, London. The brand focuses on modular, high-quality furniture for commercial and public spaces, built around clarity of form and honest use of materials. Their approach is design-led but always practical, combining sustainable sourcing with long product lifespans. Holm reflects this ethos perfectly, offering a simple yet considered solution for flexible and elegant workspace needs.
Join Collection by Foster + Partners Industrial Design for Isokon
The Join chair is built from plywood sheets that are cut, folded, and pressed into an elegant, ergonomic shell. Its distinctive form translates flat surfaces into structural volume, a result of full-scale prototyping and precision veneer techniques. The chair can be paired with a matching footstool or functional tables with cable-friendly tabletops. Together, they form the Join collection, developed in close collaboration with British plywood experts Isokon.
Foster + Partners Industrial Design operates at the edge of architecture and product, combining advanced manufacturing with a hands-on, model-driven approach. Their work blends rational problem-solving with craft, as seen in Join’s simple geometry and refined build. Isokon, the furniture brand behind the collection, has been mastering plywood since 1931. Known for iconic Bauhaus collaborations and London-based production, Isokon continues to push the possibilities of this versatile material. Join celebrates that legacy—quietly inventive, efficient, and built to last.
WA Table Lamp by Akasaki & Vanhuyse
WA is a table lamp made from reclaimed train parts, giving new life to 1,400 resin rings once used as strap handles on Tokyo’s retired Den-en-toshi Line. Designed by Akasaki & Vanhuyse for Tokyu Corporation, each lamp stacks nine of these white rings into a soft, glowing shade. Scratches and dents from years of use are left visible, creating a unique surface texture. Mirrored metal legs hold the piece together, echoing the gentle curves of the original straps.
Akasaki & Vanhuyse is a London-based studio founded by Japanese architect Kenta Akasaki and French industrial designer Astrid Vanhuyse. Their work spans product, furniture, lighting, and research, always with a purpose-driven mindset. With WA, they embrace imperfection and emotional sustainability. The lamp is made to last, locally assembled in Tokyo, and fully recyclable. More than a functional object, WA is a statement about reuse, memory, and how design can celebrate what already exists.
CorpusForma by Maria Bravo for EcoLattice
Inspired by the structure of the human spine, CorpusForma is a sculptural outdoor seat that shifts with the body. Designed by Maria Bravo, a multidisciplinary designer from Mexico City, the piece uses EcoLattice’s 3D-printed foam alternative to merge comfort, ergonomics, and upholstery innovation. Its flexible form supports different postures, showing how upholstery can become both structural and expressive.
The piece was featured in Beyond Foam, an exhibition curated by EcoLattice at Aram Gallery during the London Design Festival. The show brought together eight emerging designers to explore new ideas in seating, materials, and user interaction. EcoLattice, founded by Yash Shah, is a materials startup replacing toxic polyurethane foams with a recyclable, 3D-printed lattice made from automotive waste. Their lightweight, breathable structures aim to reshape the future of comfort. CorpusForma embodies this mission, offering a sustainable, adaptive, and emotionally engaging alternative to traditional foam-based seating.
Venustas Chair by OLIVIAKL
The Venustas chair reinterprets the ancient arch as a symbol of both grace and strength. A single cantilevered leg extends from the central frame, highlighting the arch’s natural stability while giving the chair a delicate, almost weightless balance. Named after the Latin word for beauty—associated with the goddess Venus—the piece blends structural logic with sculptural harmony.
The chair is part of The Phoenician Object, a collection by OLIVIAKL, a multidisciplinary practice led by Lebanese architect and designer Olivia Akl. Presented during the London Design Festival, the collection explores the intersection of architecture, art, and cultural identity through collectible furniture. Akl draws from East Mediterranean history, using traditional forms to surface feminine motifs and personal narratives. With Venustas, she transforms a timeless architectural element into a contemporary object that feels both ancient and modern, emotional and precise. It is design as storytelling, where every curve speaks of heritage and meaning.
Kora X Coffee Table by Secolo
The Kora X coffee table challenges convention with bold angles and unexpected balance. Its top, made from solid marble, changes slope at each corner, creating a shape that feels in motion. The legs connect from the outside, slightly offset, and are crafted in solid wood with stained finishes. Available in two heights, Kora X works well as a standalone piece or in dynamic compositions. Every detail is sharp and sculptural.
Secolo is a contemporary design brand founded in 2018, with a headquarters and showroom in Milan and a production center in Tolentino, Italy. The brand blends forward-thinking aesthetics with artisanal manufacturing, using locally sourced materials and traditional techniques. All pieces are made to order by skilled Italian craftspeople. Inspired by collectible design, Secolo creates works that are both familiar and entirely new—elegant, functional, and always open to customization. Kora X perfectly captures this mix of form, detail, and expressive experimentation.
Sofa Bed by SLOWE Living®
More than just a piece of furniture, this design anchors a lifestyle built around rest, flexibility, and conscious living. SLOWE Living® creates objects that reflect a slower pace, promoting inner comfort over constant consumption. Their debut piece is a handcrafted sofa-bed that transforms easily into a full UK double bed, ideal for compact homes, guest rooms, or home offices. Flat-packed for easy delivery and assembly, it’s made in England using FSC-certified plywood and designed for disassembly and repair.
Founded by Oliver Stokes, an industrial designer shaped by time in Tokyo and Copenhagen, the brand takes a seasonal, small-batch approach to production, choosing craft over speed. Influenced by 1970s LA architecture, Danish modernism, and 1990s Japanese design, SLOWE Living speaks to a community seeking timeless, functional objects. Beyond the product, the brand shares playlists, stories, and events that spark reflection on how we live and rest.
Wake by Heatherwick Studio and Tala
At first glance, this looks like a handmade object—a sculptural ceramic piece with a pressed glass top. But Wake is, in fact, a fully functional sleep device. Created by Heatherwick Studio and British lighting brand Tala, it blends natural materials and analog gestures with smart lighting tech. The intuitive spinning dial controls circadian lighting and ambient sounds, replacing harsh phone alarms with a calmer, more human routine.
Designer Thomas Heatherwick calls it “an alternative form of bedside light and alarm, made from natural materials, that uses light, touch, and sound to rid ourselves of plasticky tech devices.” Despite its crafted appearance, Wake connects to an app to program sleep-wake cycles. It’s a response to digital fatigue, built for a bedroom without screens. In a market full of plastic and displays, Wake offers a quieter, more tactile kind of tech—one you actually want to live with.
SHRINX Lounge Chair by Boris Berlin for +Halle
The chair strips the classic club seat down to its bare bones. With no foam or padding, only a steel frame and a semi-transparent mesh textile by Krall+Roth, it offers comfort through structure. The fabric is sewn, placed around the frame, and shrunk using heat, forming a soft, sculptural seat without any traditional upholstery.
Described by designer Boris Berlin as “a protest and a venture into a new category of upholstery,” it reflects a conscious move away from polyurethane foam. Inspired by the club chair archetype, it creates a sense of personal space without feeling closed off. “It’s about being alone but amongst people,” he says. Lightweight and minimal, the piece also nods to iconic designs like Shiro Kuramata’s How High the Moon. The team behind it is already working on new versions for outdoor use and larger formats, continuing their push toward a new kind of soft seating.