LDF 2026: Design collectives

Much has been said and written about design festivals having to bow to economic restraints and corporate rule. This year, independent collectives across London got together to shake up the establishment by just doing it themselves, together.

I visited two exhibitions that stood out not only for giving space to emerging talent, but for offering a welcome shift from polished showrooms and stark galleries: relaxed, immersive spaces that invited you to hang out, interact and explore.

Design Everything began after London designer Lewis Duckworth was quoted £900 per square metre to exhibit at LDF and decided to...

Niklas Roy Constructs a Functional Pendulum Clock Made Entirely of Trash

Niklas Roy is fascinated by the convergence of art and technology. From robotics to gaming systems, the Berlin-based artist and inventor creates quirky yet thought-provoking sculptures and installations that investigate relationships between creativity, science, and tech. His mechanical contraptions are often infused with a lighthearted twist that prompts viewers to think critically and get involved. And his most recent project draws on one of the most fundamental types of technology humans have ever developed: telling time.

“Glashütte Trash Clock” is named for the town in Saxony, Germany, where the artist participated in a residency this year. It’s also the...

Meta's Radically Thinner, More Lightweight VR Glasses

There's a gigantic size gap between VR glasses and ordinary spectacles. I expected Apple to start closing that gap first, but instead it's Meta that's taking the design lead. Their forthcoming Meta VR glasses have chunky stems, but otherwise look a lot closer to regular eyewear.

Incredibly, they weigh just 100g (3.5 oz). The Meta Quest 3, their incumbent design, weighs five times as much. The design team achieved the weight savings in two ways: One, while the glasses contain the display, cameras and sensors, they offloaded the battery, storage and processor into a separate...

AI Has Changed What Makes a Great Designer

For most of my nearly three decades teaching design at Parsons School of Design, there was a relatively straightforward answer to the question of what made a young designer valuable: technical proficiency. Students needed to know how to draw, construct, render, prototype, photograph, present, and eventually master whatever digital tools were transforming the profession. The tools changed constantly. The underlying expectation did not.

Then AI arrived.

Today, a designer can generate polished images, presentations, variations, and even entire visual directions in minutes. The ability to produce is becoming abundant—and when production becomes abundant, something else becomes scarce.

Judgment.

This...

Titan Straps: Fast, Tough Tie-Down Straps Invented for a Bikerafting Trip

Here's a fascinating way to travel: Bikerafting. First popularized in Alaska in the 1980s, you ride through the wilderness on your bike, carrying a packraft (an inflatable raft).

Image: Kokopelli

When you reach a body of water…

Image: Kokopelli

…you inflate the raft, load up your bike, and cross.

Image: Kokopelli

Depending on conditions, it can get kind of hairy. Tying your stuff down securely is important, so that nothing gets lost in the drink. Rather than rope, which can get wet, bikerafters traditionally used waterproof, polyurethane ski straps to hold their gear down.

Image: Kokopelli...

Demeter by Matthew Fisher

Demeter is a graphic identity and packaging design project created in collaboration with artist and designer Matthew Fisher. The project encompassed logo, editorial, and packaging design, as well as a series of hand-drawn illustrations, all aimed at creating a product that evokes nostalgia, romance, and timelessness.

Knekt floor lamp by Hegren

Dezeen Showroom: local production, repairability and honest design are foregrounded in Norwegian brand Hegren's Knekt floor lamp.

Designed for the contemporary home, where people might use an armchair to work in as much as relax in, the Knekt lamp provides directional light that is easily angled and height-adjusted.

Like all of Hegren's products, it is designed with a focus on repairability and longevity, using standard components as much as possible so they can be replaced if needed.

Its form is intended to be pure and easy to understand, with a lampshade bent from a single laser-cut sheet...

A "Mirror" Made Out of Motorized Penguins

21c Museum Hotels is a hospitality company that combines boutique hotels and restaurants with contemporary art gallery spaces free to the public. Founders Laura Lee Brown and Steve Wilson, both art collectors, want the public to be able to experience art as part of everyday life.

Brown and Wilson also have a thing for penguins, which they use as their public-art mascot. Not real penguins; the duo purchased a number of penguin statues made out of recycled plastic, and have populated their six hotels with them. The penguins, which are rotated throughout the properties by...

Stanton Williams designs boarding houses to "support the culture" of Winchester College

Architecture studio Stanton Williams has completed two boarding houses for girls at Winchester College, wrapping courtyards with gabled brick buildings that reference the historic layout and architecture of the 640-year-old site.

Winchester College was originally founded in 1382, and the project is its first new boarding complex since 1912. It is also the first in its history designed for girls since the school moved to co-education in 2022.

Stanton Williams aimed to ground the scheme in both the site's historic architecture and the "culture of the college", using familiar materials and a layout based on its historic buildings and cloisters.

Populous reveals design for 70,000-seat Vietnamese national stadium

Architecture studio Populous has unveiled its design for the Rach Chiec Stadium in Ho Chi Minh City, which will become the country's national stadium.

Set to be built on the outskirts of the city, the stadium will be the largest in the country when completed, with around 30,000 seats more than the current record holder – the Mỹ Đình National Stadium.

The stadium will be wrapped in a diamond-patterned facade that, according to the studio, was informed by the shape of Nipa Palms that grow alongside rivers in the area.

It will be covered by a fully retractable roof...