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Discover what’s hot in the world of interiors at Design Centre, Chelsea Harbour, Europe’s biggest destination for interior design professionals and enthusiasts
With more than 600 brands and 120 showrooms, Design Centre, Chelsea Harbour is a highlight of the London Design Festival. The largest design hub in Europe, it spans three domes as well as four floors in Design Centre East – and, for six days in September, it’s home to the annual Focus design event. This is your chance to see new collections from established brands and meet a host of emerging talent – plus, the international artist Moritz Waldemeyer wants to fill you with positivity through his installation of light, colour and movement.
Design Centre, Chelsea Harbour has long played host to some of the most influential names in interiors. Take inspiration from the fabrics and wallcoverings in the showrooms of Style Library, GP & J Baker, Romo, Arte, Lelièvre, Altfield, Sutherland Perennials Studio, Colefax and Fowler, Cole & Son, Holland & Sherry and Dedar. Admire the furniture at Poliform, Porada, Gallotti & Radice, Savoir Beds, Giorgetti and Flexform. Find vibrant rugs at Tufenkian Artisan Carpets, see the latest bathroom innovations at Samuel Heath, Victoria + Albert Baths and Villeroy & Boch, and check out the latest kitchens at Espresso Design and Perrin & Rowe. There will be a jampacked programme of more than 100 free sessions, including talks, demonstrations, workshops and discovery tours, giving you ‘access all areas’ to the newest ideas in home décor. 16–21 September (dcch.co.uk).
How do you describe what you do? That’s a difficult question! I’m a curious creator of sorts, I go in creative directions that aren’t limited to a single discipline, borrowing strands from art, design, photography and fashion – just being very free. I hesitate to use the phrase ‘Renaissance Man’, but perhaps it’s the closest description. Polymath, maybe?
Light features prominently in your work – what materials do you prefer to use when designing?
I started out in my career at the same time as the rise in the innovation of the LED bulb – I was working at Phillips from around 2000, when LEDS were just little signal lights on radios. We had the sense that they would become twice as strong and half as expensive, and the beauty of them for me is that they can be easily interfaced with electronics, simply controlled, and used to create amazing effects and an incredible ambience. You can use them to tap into people’s emotions. You see, fire is something that is programmed into our psyches – we have an instant response to it. With LEDS, I can find a way to mimic that, but make it look more curious than flames, amplifying the response.
What was the brief Design Centre, Chelsea Harbour came to you with?
They wanted an installation that would be site-specific, would attract people and be a talking point. It needed to be interactive and photogenic. I love the building’s octagonal domes, so was inspired to cover two walls in octagonal frames that will shine light around the space. The Design Centre is all about decorative elements, full of wallpaper and fabric samples, so people will be able to bring their swatches up to a camera beside the lights and it will read their colours, turning the LEDS into that specific shade. It means the installation will be led by the curious, and we’ll be able to tell which colours are the biggest trends of the season by looking at which ones get shown to the camera most often. What do you hope people will get from it? At the moment, nothing is more necessary than positivity – we are being overrun with negativity every time we open a newspaper. Design needs to counteract that and bring balance back to the world with optimistic vibes – that’s what my practice is all about. Waldemeyer’s installation ‘Journey of Colour’, a 12-metre-long walkway of light, will be open 16–21 September (waldemeyer.com)