THE EXHIBITIONIST Ed Vaizey

The EXHIBITIONIST

Don’t underestimate the power of great design, says Ed Vaizey. It influences everything

Sony Design’s Into Sight installation in Cromwell Place

This month the London Design Festival celebrates its 20th edition. It was established in 2003 by Sir John Sorrell and Ben Evans. John Sorrell was the founder – with his wife Frances – of a highly successful brand design agency Newell and attract around 600,000 visitors from more than 75 countries. It commissions unique pieces of design, beginning with Zaha Hadid’s Urban Nebula in 2007, or AL_A’s timber wave outside the V&A, which took two weeks to build, not to mention John Pawson’s famous Perspectives installation at St Paul’s. It invites countries across the globe to install pavilions showcasing Sorrell, which famously and controversially redesigned their best designers. British Airways’ tail fins in the late 1990s. Ben is a scion There are some great highlights this year. At South Kensington’s of a Labour dynasty and well-known design expert. Cromwell Place (a new and exciting gallery venue), Sony Design is presenting

John became something of a mentor to me when I was the Minister a ‘life-sized media platform’ entitled Into Sight. Through an immersive for the creative industries. He comes from a working-class background interplay of audio and visual effects, visitors will be able to ‘discover new and took every educational opportunity he could. He spent his teenage insights regarding the coexistence of physical and meta realities’. It’s years attending Saturday morning classes at his local further education basically going to be one big video wall. college, and years later used his money to set up Saturday clubs to give a There will be a modern Stonehenge, built not by stone-age man but new generation the same opportunity he had. He is a huge champion of by architectural practice Stanton Williams and engineers Webb Yates, at the role of design in our society and flew around the Greenwich Peninsula. It’s a ‘participatory sculptural world as a British business ambassador, extolling the form’, made from a mix of materials, including virtues of British design. 150-million-year-old Jurassic limestone and marble.

Every conversation I had with John was an education, At the V&A a series of installations will explore the and thought-provoking. I have often invoked his analysis theme of transformation. DesignSingapore Council and of the importance of design, pointing out that the Singapore’s National Design Centre will be presenting Chinese do not envy our manufacturing capability, R for Repair. Designers from Singapore and the UK will but rather crave the magic dust of creativity that is so repair objects from each other’s countries – with echoes fundamental to the success of so many products. Britain of my favourite TV show, The Repair Shop. The festival has an unrivalled design ecosystem, which rarely if ever also has 12 design districts, ranging from Stratford to gets noticed by senior politicians, many of whom fail Park Royal, and there will be international pavilions to understand its crucial importance. from Denmark to Korea, and Portugal to Sweden.

The London Design Festival, then, is not just a There will be plenty of things to visit, much to see, wonderful festival of creativity but a signpost to the or even just to pass by. And as you take great photos on world of design in the UK. Like London’s other great your smartphone, pause to think about how the power festivals for film and fashion, it does not take place in of great design made you decide which brand to buy. one building, though the Victoria and Albert Museum is its main partner. Over the course of a week, it will 17-25 September 2022, londondesignfestival.com

Sir John Sorrell, co-founder of the London Design Festival