Urban Plunge: New Designs for Natural Swimming In Our Cities

Urban Plunge: New Designs For Natural Swimming In Our Cities curated by Jane Withers for Wonderwater.

A panel discuss the capital’s waterway and ask will we soon be swimming in the Thames again? Exploring what it takes to make the river a leisure space and how design can develop an urban retreat.

Free Talk / Seminar
Chelsea Design Quarter
6 – 8pm
15 September 2014
020 7610 9503
http://www.rocalondongallery.com

Roca London Gallery,
Station Court
Townmead Road
SW6 2PY

Accompanying the exhibition Urban Plunge, a notable panel discuss the capital’s waterway and ask will we soon be swimming in the Thames again? Exploring what it takes to make the river a leisure space and how design can develop a natural urban retreat.

Urban Plunge
11 September – 10 January 2015
Urban Plunge explores both existing schemes and future visions for river swimming in the heart of our cities.

Commissioned by Roca London Gallery, it showcases international design and architectural projects that transform urban rivers into public leisure spaces, giving people an exciting new, water-level perspective on their metropolis.

Curator Jane Withers, a design consultant and co-founder of Wonderwater, has selected five key projects to illustrate architecture and design’s role in radically changing river usage, challenging our attitude to the urban water environment.

LDF listing here.
Image from LDF website.

A designer’s guide to 3D printing

A look at current and future opportunities and legal threats of 3D printing for designers. Hosted by design law experts Wragge Lawrence Graham, the panel includes Jonathan Rowley, design director of Digits2Widgets, Martin Darbyshire, CEO of tangerine, and Tim Brown, co-founder of Three Over Seven.

Ticketed Talk / Seminar
14:00-15:30
16 September 2014

Seminar Room Three
V&A
Cromwell Road
SW7 2RL

Tickets & LDF listing here.
Image from LDF website.

Beyond Design: Creating Emotional Relevance

Dismissing design as we know it, Branko Lukic – thought leader, author and designer – shows us that the future of design lies in a single-minded focus on emotional relevance.

Free Talk / Seminar
Tuesday 14:30-15:30
http://www.nonobject.com

Lydia and Manfred Gorvy Lecture Theatre
V&A
Cromwell Road
SW7 2RL

Product design has existed over thousands of years as a tradition fundamentally rooted in identifying and fulfilling basic human needs. However, as society and technology have evolved, so have our needs and expectations; products no longer need to be simply functional, but also stylish and current. Today, the design industry creates products, whether physical or digital, which flawlessly merge functionality with aesthetics. With an ever-faster pace of business requiring a constant churn of new product releases, there is an ocean of “perfect” products out there. But despite this plethora of perfection, humans struggle to find products they can relate to, products that feel truly meaningful them.

Dismissing design as we know it, Branko Lukic shows us that the future of design lies in a single-minded focus on emotional relevance. His approach shifts the paradigm of design with a fundamental belief that innovation in function and aesthetics is not enough. Ultimately, the best products reside beyond the object itself in the emotional connection with the user. In essence, the focus of design is no longer just the object, but the space between the object and the user – the space where experiences are defined and emotional relevance created.

In this engaging and provocative presentation, Branko demonstrates how traditional design theories can no longer be relied upon to create meaningful products and experiences, and how a new approach, focusing on emotional relevance, is needed going forward.

NONOBJECT is a California based design and branding studio. By focusing on emotional relevance the studio helps clients innovate and realize break-through experiences.

LDF listing here.
Images from LDF website.

Designing in 2024 – After 50 years of the Internet

Visit the Human Centred Design Institute at Brunel University London for this year’s student design competition titled ‘Designing in 2024 – After 50 years of the Internet’. The event promises a vibrant mix of multi-disciplinary design talks and pecha-kucha presentations –voting for your favourite.

Free Talk / Seminar
13:30-19:00
18 September 2014
+44 (0)1895 265975

Directions
Brunel University
Uxbridge
UB8 3PH

LDF listing here.
Images from LDF website.

London Design Festival website: Service Design tags

These events are tagged as service design events on the LDF website.

Please email Lior if you are an organiser, and can confirm whether service design is going to be shown or talked about in any of these events.

Found In Translation

An installation of a Maggie’s kitchen table

Be inspired by light and control: how to transform your home and lifestyle

Roselind Wilson Design

TOTO: AND Film Festival screenings and Toilet Architecture presentation powered by Pecha Kucha

Chelsea Design Quarter Late Opening

JAB Design Debate

Typography in the Digital Landscape

The following are apparently services for designers during the Festival:

Don’t just patent it. Protect it.

Dezeen Watch Store pop-up

620 Reading Room with magCulture and Postcard Teas

Breaking into the design industry – a Design Week session

Running a design business – a Design Week session

Goldsmiths: Not This

Fifty young designers from the far reaches of the world have come together in London to challenge the requirements of design practice.

NOT THIS is an exhibition of their works that broaden the definition of ‘design’ beyond the realms of pretty posters and unusual chairs.

Free exhibition
Sat Sun 9am – 8pm, Mon Tue 9am – 9pm, Wed Thu 9am – 8pm
020 7739 6176
notthis.co.uk
www.gold.ac.uk/design/

The Ditch – Shoreditch Town Hall
380 Old Street
London
EC1V 9LT

For centuries designers have been mastering the art manipulation, driven by a consumerist society that constantly confuses want and need. ‘The Designer’ has been belittled, bowing their head in submission of a world that seeks to numb its primal instinct, feeding desire with false happiness.

A fear – greed dichotomy rules us, ‘The Designer’ is forced to glamourise the mundane and fetishise the basic and uninteresting. At London Design Festival you’ll find yourself staring at inanimate objects brainwashed into believing they’re somehow an extension of your sexual appendages. For years now, attendees of these ‘parades of the pointless’ have come to expect and feel comfortable with the discussion of ‘aesthetics’ and how the curvaceous chair that sits before them is a ‘socio-economic expression of contemporary furniture’.

Expect:
To question everything, to have your beliefs challenged, your ideas threatened and your mind expanded. To understand something you never understood before, to consider the inconsiderable and project yourself into worlds previously unchartered.

Don’t expect:
To gorp at an over-priced IKEA show room, to have buzzwords bound upon you like a User Experiencing, Content consuming, Web Guru sponge.

LDF listing here.
Image from LDF website.

Breaking Through: New projects from the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design Royal College of Art

This exhibition explores how current research by the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design at the Royal College of Art is translating into new products, services and systems – and breaking through to achieve impact in the market, public discourse and policymaking.

Free Exhibition
10am – 5.30pm
15-21 September 2014
+44 (0)20 7590 4444
www.rca.ac.uk/research-innovation/helen-hamlyn-centre

Royal College of Art
Dyson Building
Hester Road
London
SW11 4AN

LDF listing here.
Image from LDF website.

Sustain RCA Show & Awards 2014

How can design address today’s critical environmental social and political issues impacting tomorrow? ‘Looking Forwards’ the 5th edition of Royal College of Art initiative the SustainRCA Show & Awards offers a visionary showcase of innovative solutions and critical thinking exploring this question.

Free Exhibition
18 September – 3 October, open 11am–6pm daily
sustain.rca.ac.uk/

Royal College of Art
Kensington Gore
London
SW7 2EU

LDF listing here.
Image from LDF website.

Service Design @ Designersblock 2014

Last year was the first year that we held a service design event during the London Design Festival. It was so well received that we felt we just had to do something this year too.

The event was on 19th September 2014. To see photos from the event, click here.

We also included listings of service design related events last year that happened during the festival.
___________________________________________________________________________

We invite you to an afternoon of talks and a workshop about service design at the London Design Festival.

The London Design Festival (LDF) is one of the largest, most exciting design festivals in the world. London is also a major hub for service design. It’s time we combine the two, and celebrate all that the London service design scene has to offer during LDF.

On Friday afternoon during LDF, we invite designers who are curious about service design to come and find out about what we do, and why it’s valuable. We will run a design challenge to put service design techniques into practice, in multidisciplinary teams. And then we’ll have networking drinks.

PART ONE
3pm-4pm

What is service design? Service designers will run through sample projects and techniques they used in 10 minute lightning talks.

Speakers
Geke van Dijk, STBY
Harriet McDougall, FutureGov
Dominic Burton, Livework
James Rock, Design Thinkers UK
Cat Drew, Policy Lab UK

Click here to download details of the talks.

PART TWO
4pm-6pm

STBY, a service design agency, are hosting the Design Challenge. This will be a dynamic, co-creative session where the participants work together to explore challenging topics from a service design perspective. The facilitators will coach them in using some of the tools and techniques presented earlier.

PART THREE
6pm

How did you get into design? Have a chat with each other over drinks to find out more about service design and how we could all foster crossovers between design disciplines.

Places are strictly limited and tickets are allocated on a first come, first served basis. Register for the event here.

About the venue:
Designersblock design and deliver unique exhibitions, events and experiences in the UK and internationally working with a huge network of independent designers, creative partners, commercial clients and brands to bring the most innovative ideas to the widest possible audience.

In 2014 Designersblock will be held at the Old Sessions House in Clerkenwell Green, a beautiful regency building which has not been accessible to the public in living memory.

About the organiser:
Lior Smith designs services. She has worked on projects covering issues such as ageing well and inspiring creativity in bureaucratic environments. She used to design furniture. She is a networking event addict.

The Future Of Money

Method London’s creative director, Philip O’Dwyer, chairs a panel discussion on the future of money.

We will explore future scenarios, new technologies, and their impact on our everyday lives.

Speakers to be confirmed.

Talk / Seminar
Free

16 September
10.30-11.30

Lydia and Manfred Gorvy Lecture Theatre
Victoria and Albert Museum
Cromwell Road
SW7 2RL

method.com/work/method-money

LDF listing here.
Image from LDF website.