London Design Festival 2016 Opens with Alison Brooks' The Smile

The London Design Festival 2016 launched today with Alison Brooks' monumental landmark project 'The Smile' in the courtyard of the Chelsea College of Arts. The installation is a massive inverted wooden arch that touches the ground at a single point, resembling a wheel. Brooks collaborated with Arup to create a curvilinear tunnel made of cross-laminated timber, featuring two 16-meter cantilevers over a total length of 34 meters, showcasing the structural and spatial potential of the material. The festival responds to Mayor Sadiq Khan's 'London is Open' call post-Brexit with the first edition of the Design Biennale and over 400 events including exhibitions, installations, and talks across the city. The Victoria and Albert Museum serves as the festival's headquarters, commissioning works such as Benjamin Hubert's magnetic installation with moving metal ribbons and LED lights illuminating medieval tapestries, Mathieu Lehanneur's 'Liquid Marble' exploring 3D technology in the Music Room, Glithero's colorful moving ropes on the West Wing's spiral staircase, and Julian Melchiorri's 'Silk Leaf' artificial photosynthesis prototype. The festival runs from September 17 to 25, 2016, at various venues in London.