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LDF 20 Years: Anniversary Book

Collector's Limited Edition

In celebration of London Design Festival's 20th anniversary, this limited-edition collector's book looks at the last two decades of storytelling through the lens of design

LDF 20 Years journeys through a visual narrative of the architectural installations, interactive collaborations and innovative experiments that have been commissioned by team LDF and created by designers like Es Devlin, John Pawson, the late Zaha Hadid and Yinka Ilori. Over 20 years, LDF projects have been rethinking how we use public spaces in this transforming capital city – from a glowing red lion that roared poetry in Trafalgar Square to a 22m-tall paper tower outside Royal Festival Hall.

There’s a multifaceted power to the capital’s design scene and its different disciplines. Leaf through this book to learn from the designers, and find contributions from the creative thinkers, practitioners and educators who have worked with LDF to deliver an unmissable celebration of design.

Features

  • Designed by Pentagram

  • Large format folio (approx. 430mm x 300mm)

  • Luxe slipcase

  • Foreword by Deyan Sudjic

  • 60 LDF projects from the last 20 years

  • Four different covers

  • Limited numbered edition of 200 copies

"Over dinner one night, John Sorrell and Ben Evans discussed the idea of a design festival. The following morning Evans called Sorrell: 'did we really agree to start a festival?'"

Designed by Pentagram

Led by Pentagram partner Domenic Lippa, the renowned design studio has been working on the Festival’s branding for 16 years. Lippa and his team created this beautiful large-format book to celebrate how LDF has evolved over the years.

"When John Sorrell described for the first time what a design festival in London might be like, he used an appropriately literary metaphor in a carefully-crafted speech that he delivered at the Globe Theatre in 2002. 'Our scene is London,' he began. It is a line that comes from the prologue to The Alchemist, a play written by Ben Jonson, Shakespeare’s contemporary and talented rival. 'This festival will mix fireworks and contemplation,' Sorrell promised. 'It will not be confined to convention centres and exhibition halls, it will spill out into the streets and take over the whole city,' he said.

Twenty years later, that is pretty much how the London Design Festival turned out."