Clerkenwell Design Week 2023

Trends to recalibrate your design barometer 

If there’s a Mecca for all things interior, it’s the annual Clerkenwell Design Week. Not only is it one of the best networking opportunities for industry creatives, but it’s also a honeypot for design fandom. 

Billed as a key destination for specification, as well as a valuable source for architects and interior designers to discover new talent and trends, 2023’s event was bursting at the seams with the pick of the creative-mind crop.  

Clerkenwell Design Week returned to EC1, on 23-25 May showcasing thousands of innovative products in the sun. 

The UK’s leading design festival celebrated London’s creative hub with more than 160 showrooms, 600 events, thousands of products, installations, brand activations, topical talks and more. 

Day One

One of the highlights from Day One was Conversations at Clerkenwell, including a chat between artist Morag Myerscough and U+I’s Martyn Evans about Morag’s boundary-breaking work. Her goal is to transform places and highlight community and public interaction by creating colour-filled installations and immersive spatial artworks. 

Meanwhile, What’s Nordic About Nordic Design shone a spotlight on Scandinavian furniture design. Hosted by Disegno, with guests including Alvar Aalto 2023 Steering Group and Fritz Hansen, the talk explored its cultural significance, and speculated about its future. 

Amongst other talks and displays that caught our eye was a specially commissioned installation by Steve Messam. Steve is a Durham-based artist renowned for his large-scale, maximalist artwork that ingeniously reflects an understanding of the geological, cultural and agricultural practices of the landscape, be that architectural or natural. 

One of this year’s Design Week event themes was unsurprisingly sustainability. The importance of bringing this important frame-of-mind into design was cleverly illustrated by the Leave No Trace pop-up installation from the Senator Group. The piece celebrated the beauty that can be created from recycled sources. 

Day Two

Day Two brought us, among other things, PLP Architecture’s interpretive installation, Symbiocene Living. Situated in St John’s Square, this provocative and thought-provoking piece aimed to encourage us to engage with mycelium architecture.  

AllSfär was another cheerleader for fungi creativity, proudly displaying their new mycelium acoustic wall tiles called Fika in their new showroom just off the Clerkenwell Road. Produced in collaboration with mushroom packaging manufacturer the Magical Mushroom Company, Fika is produced from UK-grown fungi and industrial hemp, and proved a fine example of a wall tile that is aesthetically pleasing while also being functional and sustainable.  

Also of note on Day Two was a discussion on ‘life-centred design’ and biophilia, with biophilic design strategist Victoria Jackson asking why nature remains central to a more holistic approach to design. 

Day Three

Bioo’s award-winning Bioo Lux was one of the standouts of Day Three. With a lamp acting as a plant pot acting as a lamp, the light can be switched on by touching the plant leaves. It’s a touchy-feely consumer product made using naturally and ethically sourced fine materials and incorporating the Bioo’s latest technology: the biological switch. 

Dyson, meanwhile, launched their HEPA Big+Quiet Formaldehyde Purifier at Old Sessions House. The company claims that it’s one of the quietest and most powerful air purifiers, and is designed for professional use and to increase the air quality in shared spaces.  

We were also very taken with the Conscious Chair 3162. First designed in 1958 by the hugely influential Danish figures in design and architecture, Børge Mogensen and Esben Klint, this version for Mater is made out of FSC® wood and Matek.  

If you don’t know what that is, let us enlighten you. FSC® wood and Mater Circular Materials are recycled fibre-based waste materials with recycled plastic waste from GROHE, and perfectly illustrate how technology has been used to recycle fibre-based waste materials and turn them into an item of purpose. For Design Week, Mater realised their ideas in an interactive installation titled ‘Wastedream’ (a play on the term waste stream) in their Clerkenwell-based showroom, the Mater Earth Gallery. 

Do you have the goods to compete with these design gurus?

Then all of us at mustard ID are very keen indeed to speak to you. We have some amazing job opportunities for people who’ve got the talent to go far, so give us a call. The number you need is 0117 929 6060.