The 2018 London Design Festival is in full swing. With more than 400 events taking place across the city until the end of the week, the annual festival celebrates modern design and innovation with 11 designated design districts, as well as a series of landmark projects. Here’s some of the best installations at this year’s LDF!

Alphabet

Where: Finsbury Avenue Square, Broadgate, EC2A 2EH.

Nearest Tube: Liverpool Street

The most Instagramable installation at this year’s Festival is undoubtedly Kellenberger-White’s ‘Alphabet’. Found at Broadgate near Liverpool Street Station, the design studio have created a 26-strong collection of colourful chairs to be climbed and sat on. Each letter of the alphabet has been constructed using folded metal and licked with a different colour of paint to form a typographic rainbow. The installation is said to be ‘an engineering experiment in folding metal to create a typographic system that you can interact with, merging the worlds of typography, furniture design and gravity.’ Just be careful on ‘W’, OK?

Please Feed the Lions

Where: Trafalgar Square, WC2N 5DN.

Nearest Tube: Charing Cross

Famed designer Es Devlin has been given the freedom to install a flourescent, poetry-spouting lion at the base of Nelson’s Column for this year’s London Design Festival. An LED screen is embedded in the lion’s mouth and shows lines of poetry generated using new machine learning technology and words fed to the lion by the public in a separate screen next to the lion in Trafalgar Square. At night, the poetry will be projected onto the lion’s body and onto Nelson’s Column.

Dazzle

Where: V&A, Cromwell Road, SW7 2RL.

Nearest Tube: South Kensington

The V&A is always a bit of a hub during London Design Week and this year is no different. One of the exhibitions we’ve got our eye on is ‘Dazzle’. Found in room 131A, the specially commissioned project created by Pentagram with 14-18 NOW is inspired by the First World War concept of Dazzle, which saw the surface of war ships covered in experimental camouflage. Audiences will surround themselves in these camouflages influenced by Cubism, Vorticism and animal camouflage.

Time for Tea

Where: Fortnum & Masons, 181 Piccadilly, W1A 1ER.

Nearest Tube: Piccadilly Circus

If you’re looking for more of an immersive experience, Scholten and Baijings have turned the first floor of Fortnum & Mason into a ‘tea installation’ with tea party performances taking place four times a day throughout the festival. Using more than 80 products, designed by companies from across the globe, the installation will deliver a unique take on the ritual of tea, set across a series of tables. All the furniture has been designed by the Dutch studio in the distinctive Fortnum’s ‘eau de nil’ Green.

Flip Book Garden

Where: Canal Side, Sheldon Square, W2 6EZ.

Nearest Tube: Paddington

One of the more surreal experiences to be had this year can be found on Regent’s Canal in Paddington. Founder of Studio Appétit, Ido Garini, has created a life-size installation that will mimic a pop-up book. The ‘colourful urban oasis’ will be flipped throughout the day to create an entirely new atmosphere that visitors are encouraged to interact with. Certainly one for the big kids!

Designjunction

Where: V&A Sackler Courtyard, Cromwell Road, SW7 2RL.

Nearest Tube: South Kensington

Unsurprisingly the South Bank will be getting involved in the festivities this weekend with the eighth annual ‘Designjunction’. The cutting-edge interior design and installation event will be set across three main sites – Doon Street, Riverside Walkway and the Oxo Tower Wharf and Bargehouse. Doon Street will host 200 international brands and pop-up shops, while the Riverside Walkway will showcase outdoor installations, and Oxo Tower Wharf and Bargehouse will be home to brand installations, talks and exhibitions. One installation on the Walkway to look out for is the steel and ribbon ‘Gateway to Inclusion’ pier.

MultiPly

Where: V&A Sackler Courtyard, Cromwell Road, SW7 2RL.

Nearest Tube: South Kensington

Another V&A installation, this time in the Sackler Courtyard, ‘MultiPly’ is a huge wooden maze-like structure designed by Waugh Thistleton Architects. Constructed from 60 cubic metres of responsibly sourced American Tulipwood, the structure will allow visitors to see the V&A from previously impossible angles, shining a light on the housing crisis and climate change in the process.

The London Design Festival runs until Sunday 23rd September. Check out the full schedule over at the LDF Website. To mark the start of the Festival, the 87 nominees for the 2018 Beazley Designs of the Year awards have just been unveiled.