London Design Festival 2026 at the V&A: Awakenings and Brompton
Every September the V&A becomes the unofficial headquarters of London Design Festival, and this year's programme opens on Saturday 12 September. Called Awakenings, it is a series of installations and interventions placed throughout the South Kensington museum, exploring how design, craft and technology can bring hidden, interconnected forces into view. Much of it sits among the permanent collections, so part of the pleasure is stumbling on contemporary work in rooms you thought you knew.
The Emerging Designer Commission
The V&A's annual Emerging Design Commission goes this year to Playfool, the artist-design unit co-founded by Daniel Coppen and Saki Maruyama. Their piece, The Server, starts from the museum's routine work of cleaning objects and turns to the physical infrastructure behind our online lives: data centres, whose construction has accelerated with the race to build AI; in the UK alone, nearly 100 new facilities are reportedly planned for completion by 2030. Playfool focuses on the one task in those highly automated buildings that resists automation, which is cleaning, and uses game design to invite visitors to take part.
Clay, embroidery and lost flowers
- Metamorphic Modulation by Albert Yonathan Setyawan is a ceramic installation of more than 700 pieces, hand-modelled in clay, slip-cast in red terracotta and left unglazed, commissioned with The Peninsula Hotels' Art in Resonance programme.
- Sender Unknown by the London-based Uzbek artist Aziza Kadyri responds to the museum's historic suzani collection, the embroidered textiles traditionally made for a bride's dowry, and asks what is lost when such images are absorbed into AI datasets.
- Once Upon A Garden by Linda Dounia presents 50 speculative species of Sahel flora, generated with AI to imagine plants of which little or no record survives.
Henry Svendsen's Lovers Hold suspends viscous, grotto-like forms on stainless steel armatures, reimagining the plinth as furniture for closeness. Also in the programme are works by Sam Ghantous, Andre Williams, Nina Davies and Eunjo Lee. Entry is free, the museum publishes a trail linking ten pieces in around 25 minutes, and most of the commissions run until 18 October. Details are on the V&A Awakenings page.
Around the corner: Brompton Design District
London's original design district, established in 2006 and stretching from the V&A to Brompton Road, runs its own programme from 12 to 20 September. Curated by Alex Tieghi-Walker, Perfectly Imperfect focuses on process rather than finished objects. The hub is The Lavery at 2 to 4 Cromwell Place, where Rafael Prieto's six sun-inspired chairs fill the Private Dining Room, with more at Cromwell Mews and Brompton Cemetery Chapel. It is open daily, with a late opening until 9pm on Thursday 17 September; the festival listing has hours.
Planning your visit
Cromwell Place is a two-minute walk from South Kensington station, so the V&A and Brompton make a natural pairing for a single afternoon. Digital Design Weekend at the museum, from 18 to 20 September, adds drop-in activity around some of the works.
