From Monday 15th September to Sunday 21st, London will be awash with design. The eleventh London Design Festival, the biggest yet, extends to all corners of the capital and covers almost every aspect of design.

A series of design districts from Shoreditch to Queens Park via Chelsea, Brompton and Islington will display work from edgy up and coming designers, artists and traditional craftsmen. In Clerkenwell you’ll find a festival of films on architecture, and in Trafalgar Square from Thursday, 18th, a set of four structures called A Place Called Home, considers what a home is all about.

Candela Pphoto by Ed Reeve

The V&A is at the heart of the LDF and is hosting a huge range of talks and exhibits by designers and artists, including works in glass, in plaster, on video and in light.

Among the new acquistions you’ll find a 3D printed chair designed by ‘air drawing’, and in the gloom of the tapestry room, a stunning installation called Candela combines LED  technology with a patented luminescent material, to play with patterns of light and brightness on a revolving disc.

Human Nature sponsored by Perrier Jouet. Photo JErome de Gerlache

Human Nature, a work by american designer Jeremy Maxwell Wintrebert is made of a series of large, fragile tubes of hand blown glass  and can be found at the entrance to the Glass galleries.

At the top of the staircase leading to the British galleries, a video, displayed inside a black temple-like structure, chronicles the fate of the English Country House and harks back to a V&A exhibition some 20 years earlier which highlighted the loss of these icons of English social history.

For lovers of furniture, a section called Wish List comprises a number of pieces of furniture inspired by well-known design names and created by talented young designers and craftsmen in American hardwoods.

If you love the idea of secret places, you’ll find the ultimate hidden chamber inside the cast of Trajan’s column in the V&A’s cast court. Ceramicist James Rigler has created an installation playing with the idea of military secrets and the phrase ‘sub rosa’.

Not to be outdone, the Building Centre in Store Street will be building the first ever 3D printed, low energy house. In the future, anyone could download, edit and print a copy of the house, at a cost of less than £50,000 and then erect it themselves without needing to have any construction skills. The ultimate DIY!

If you’re a fan of exhibitions, Design Junction and 100% Design, now in its  20th year, will be strutting their stuff from September 13th and 17th respectively.

You would need to take a week’s holiday to take advantage of everything that’s available during LDF, but some of the events/exhibits will be open in the evening and of course there’s next weekend.  So if you want to be inspired by what 21st Century design has to offer and the ways it will impact and change all our lives, grab one of the bright red LDF books, available from many of the participating venues or from the V&A, or visit the LDF website and get out there and enjoy!