Geometric Staircase, St. Paul’s CathedralThere’s nothing like recognition by the establishment to let you know you’ve officially arrived. So take a bow, 3D printing, because your time in the mainstream has come! Well, at least if the inclusion of additive manufacturing in the London Design Festival 2011 is any indicator.Launched on Saturday, September 17, the festival is running through September 25th and is a celebration of British design, covering a range of practices with 300-odd events taking place across a variety of venues that include its HQ, the Victoria and Albert Museum (which houses over 4.5 million objects of decorative arts and design), the City of London, the National History Museum, and St. Paul’s Cathedral. This epic undertaking showcases cutting edge design techniques along with bold new talent, so if nothing else, it’s admirable in its vastness and multi-disciplinary approach. If you’re in London, you probably can’t help but bump into it. To aid in your navigation of such a smorgasbord of events and exhibitions, here’s a few things to help get you started.Industrial Revolution 2.0: How the Material World Will Newly Materialise
New York-based designer and curator Murray Moss collaborates with Materialise, who run a 3D printing service, to create a series of printed pieces that will be placed throughout the museum’s galleries, making reference to eight of the Victoria and Albert Museum's key pieces and spaces. So, naturally, these include 14 printed pairs of Elizabethan prostitutes’ shoes surrounding the Bed of Ware, and a hat by milliner Stephen Jones for a Regency bust of Lady Belhaven.EPFL + ECAL LabGive Me More by the EPFL+ECAL Lab from Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne brings objects to life through the medium of augmented reality. So you get cushions that reveal people’s dreams once they touch them, mirrors that question your identity, while money reveals its allure in a series of interactive installations that give the audience starring roles in the unfolding dramas.PerspectivesArchitect John Pawson has teamed up with Swarovski to design an installation for St. Paul’s Cathedral which is a huge lens at the base of the geometric staircase in the south west tower. It has a reflective convex mirror at the top so anyone looking down into the hemisphere will see a view as if from the top of the tower, giving you a completely transformative perspective. It also ties in with Sir Christopher Wren’s idea to add a scientific element to the building.Beyond the ValleyThere had to be an iPad involved somewhere, and this is it: interactive design that lets you remix and re-interpret patterns and wallpapers using the iPad’s Granimator app. Using the touchscreen you can create new shapes, maybe put in some gold leaf, whatever floats your creative boat. The works are then uploaded to a website to share with the world.LEGO GreenhouseDesigner Sebastian Bergne has placed the world’s first functioning greenhouse built entirely from LEGO in London’s Covent Garden. The walls and earth are all made from the iconic brick. Says the designer: “"In my work, I love to make something special from the ordinary, and I hope that’s what has happened here. It’s an everyday function, made of a material we know, in an ordinary environment, but together they make something extraordinary and I think it is going to be quite magical.”
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