Celebration of design returns to London with Clerkenwell Design Week's 11^th edition

Clerkenwell Design Week came back after two years, with its 11^th edition, to celebrate design in one of the most creative districts of the city of London. Spanning across a period of three days, from May 24-26, 2022, the event welcomed various design brands to showcase their vision and ideas through their designs and saw a participation of more than 140 resident showrooms opening their doors to new audiences. As UK’s leading independent design event, Clerkenwell Design Week created an extensive yet creative festival for its visitors, which included hundreds of design-led fringe events, pop-ups, workshops, talks, and showroom presentations spread across 10 venues, three new for this year.

For the 2022 edition, the visitors at Clerkenwell Design Week were taken on a journey of awe and amazement with several installations set up by brands across the site. Danish brand HAY installed a piece of stylish outdoor furniture, named Palissade Park Dining Bench, within The Long Walk as a part of the Crypt on the Green. The event’s automotive sponsor, Porsche, created an interactive installation centered around their Taycan model. Interface, a global flooring brand, created a visual journey of its own history with a vortex of recycled econyl yarn showcasing how it went from a petroleum-led flooring manufacturer to now a climate-conscious brand. 

The visitors at Clerkenwell Design Week found their way across the event space through another installation by multidisciplinary artist Lois O’Hara. O’Hara collaborated with OnOffice magazine to design exterior murals as a series titled OnOffice Create as well as worked with Duffy London to design a special swing table, that was revealed as an installation at the event. OnOffice also collaborated with Plant Designs, a biophilic design specialist for the project titled Plant.Nurture.Bloom. The immersive installation created a moment of serenity right in the middle of the city for its user to realise the importance of greenery within the urban working environments. NVBL Architects, with their installation Shelter, transformed Clerkenwell Close into a public square to encourage more social and cultural discussions among the visitors. Staying true to the basics of architecture, the structure of the Shelter does not permanently provide the site and resembles a primary form of what shelter actually means. This structure has only three elements: a biodegradable TPU roof, anchors to bolt it down, and off-cut stones. Another architecture firm that participated was BVN Architecture, which collaborated with Second Home to create WorkPOP. The key idea was to normalise the notion of working-from-anywhere. It is a one-of-a-kind experiment that allows everyone to experience work, discussion, collaboration, and entertainment beyond the traditional boundaries of work and place.

Another highlight was the global launch of BAUX’s first-ever ceiling product within BAUX Acoustic at the Old Sessions House. Apart from BAUX, another acoustical brand Texaa also presented two acoustic spaces and organised various events to make visitors understand the fundamental importance of acoustics in space through architecture.

Spanning across 10 distinctive spaces in Clerkenwell, exhibitions were organised in both purpose-built and historic venues, all linked by a route through the centre of the district of EC1. With 10 exhibition spaces, including the three new venues introduced this year, each space took its own narrative with a different curatorial focus, ranging from international design to emerging talent, representing the best of British design. The previous 19^th century prison venue showcased Light + Rising Star, an event hosting upcoming lighting designers with the international leading brands while POP gave the visitors a new immersive experience with the latest designs by AGO, Case Furniture, and Square in Circle Studio. Other previous year venues included Design Fields at Spa Fields exhibiting leading furniture designs and the British Collection at the Crypt of St James Church with new works by the local brands.

With so many unique installations and exhibitions, Clerkenwell Design Week was filled with insightful talks and debates at the Clerkenwell Conversations curated by Katie Richardson. It was a series of daily talks that addressed the key issues across a broad range of topics through the thoughts and opinions of creatives, business leaders, and both established and emerging designers. The event saw various contributors such as Tom Dixon, Grimshaw Architects, Adam Nathaniel Furman, Joshua Mardell, and many other individual designers as well as brands.

Another integral part of the Clerkenwell Design Week 2022 was the local resident design showrooms. In over 12 years since its inception in 2010, it has seen a tremendous rise in the number of participants from the initial 40 to this year’s over 140+ showrooms. Fritz Hansen celebrated their 150^th anniversary with a special preview of its products, while Deadgood introduced new launches including ReWork, a modular seating collection. All showrooms, from the brands like Arper, and Gensler to Vitra and Kettal, used their designs and products exhibition to not only represent their brand core values and design thinking but also focused on a running theme of sustainability.

Clerkenwell Design Week returned this year with a blast and equipped with its own pink cocktails. Greater and larger than ever, the iconic pink trail was lit with extraordinary enthusiasm and excitement among the creatives and their audiences, who made Clerkenwell Design Week of 2022 possible and unforgettable.

(Text by Rashi Karkoon, intern at STIRworld)