The London Design Festival is one of the leading design events in the world, bringing together some of the greatest designers nine-day design cultural and commercial extravaganza. As part of this year’s festival came the debut of The Tramshed, an exhibition of collective creativity.
From Sept. 22-26, The Tramshed showcased 25 of some of the top names in luxury design from all over the world. It was held in a 100-year-old power station for the Shoreditch tram system (hence, the name, The Tramshed), and featured high-end brands such as Bolon, RVW, Matthew Hilton and Michael Sodeau.
This dynamic and colorful event was the brainchild of the luxury furniture design brand management firm, De La Espada, along with Deborah Spencer, Alice Breed and Andrew Figueira as its creative director. De La Espada’s founding director Luis De Oliveira said of the collaboration, “We believe London needs an exhibition that strikes a balance between imagination and careful curation – focusing on quality not quantity….We believe the Tramshed will capture the public’s imagination.” And they certainly succeeded in doing that.
Among the highlights of the event was “Human Made” by De La Espada, which was featured in the venue’s main hall and meant to be an “exhibition of emotional design.” The display included furniture, lighting and textiles and was meant to portray “levels of human involvement in producing a piece of furniture…and how we as people communicate on an emotional level through design.”
Another interesting collaboration was “The Dwelling Lab,” a joint effort from BMW and the Danish fabric specialist Kvadrat that featured the new BMW 5 Series Gran Turismo, but with a twist. The exhibition featured the car turned inside out so that the interior of the vehicle was displayed on the outside. According to one of the designers, Patricia Urquiola, the idea behind this presentation was to represent the practicality of a car and to “understand the evolution of the car as a softer, dwelling experience.”
Another fascinating part of the exhibition was that the West Berkshire based furniture company, Benchmark, transported their workmen from their shop to demonstrate how they make furniture in person. The company’s founder Sean Sutcliffe explains the brand wanted to show that, “We make [the furniture] with our own hands and in our workshop. We hope to create a little bit of that creative process in East London for everyone to share.”
Throughout the event were also a number of seminars as part of “The Tramshed Live” series. Led by design critic and program curator, Aidan Walker, these discussions included various design topics like “Can design make us more human” and “Colour Magic.”
In all, The Tramshed was a huge success, attracting more than 6,000 visitors to the show over its four-day run. And we’re already looking forward to what they come up with for next year’s event.
To view more images from the The Tramshed, visit Haute Living’s Events Gallery.
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