Five key installations at the V&A during London Design Festival 2025 – Ryunosuke Okazaki’s showcase – Courtesy of LDF.
Design. This year, the V&A’s London Design Festival programme, co-curated by Carrie Chan and Kristian Volsing, explores how design can spark conversations around the pressing issues of our times. Our pick of five key installations includes reflections on artificial intelligence and questions of identity, home, and belonging.
- RELATED STORIES: Read more about London Design Festival 2025 on Archipanic.
Ancient Echoes, Futuristic Garments
Born and raised in Hiroshima, artist Ryunosuke Okazaki translates a personal wish for peace into his JOMONJOMON series of garments. The pieces draw on the Jōmon period’s sculptural pottery—among the earliest known clay works. With their ritualistic symbolism and reverence for nature, the vessels inspired Okazaki’s futuristic silhouettes. Symmetrical yet fluid, his pieces embody both resilience and fragility, bridging millennia of cultural memory with bold contemporary form. It’s wearable art charged with hope for life’s blessings.
Threads of Belonging
Thai artist Jakkai Siributr transforms The Globe pavilion into an immersive textile world with There’s No Place. The project arises from his engagement with the refugee crisis on the Thai-Burma border, linking displaced Shan communities with global audiences. Participants embroider personal responses into the work, weaving collective narratives of loss, hope, and identity. By encouraging touch and dialogue, the installation blurs the line between citizen and refugee, turning fabric into a shared language of belonging.
Polish Posters Now! Polski Plakat Dziś!
POLISH POSTERS NOW! at V&A – Courtesy of the London Design Festival 2025.
In the wake of the Second World War, when Poland’s bomb-scarred streets were lined with fences, a new wave of graphic designers transformed the city into an open-air gallery. Their posters, celebrated for their surreal edge and originality, brought colour and optimism to the grey urbanscape. That creative spirit is still thriving today—only now it often appears on the hoardings surrounding Poland’s rapid urban developments. Presented by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, the British Council and the Polish Cultural Institute in London, the exhibition features works from four of the country’s best contemporary poster artists, such as Ola Jasionowska, Patrycja Longawa, Kaja Renkas, and Maja Wolna.
Stone, Code, and Slowness
Studio Above&Below’s (S)Low-Tech AI examines artificial intelligence through the lens of geology. Touch-responsive rocks generate evolving digital landscapes that shift in response to collective input. “A lot of AI we see today is quick and rapid,” notes Perry-James Sugden. “This project is very much about slowing down, not getting this sort of instant reward through interfacing with this work, but spending time with it.” Drawing on ancient Scottish stone carvings, the installation treats AI as a slow, ethical, and materially aware process.
Clay as Community
What happens when the building of cities also becomes an act of care? Roo Dhissou introduces Heal, Home, Hmmm—a sculptural pavilion crafted from clay dug out of London’s new high-speed rail sites. Using traditional Punjabi mud-building techniques, she reframes construction as a process of healing. The work asks us to consider how access, care, and responsibility towards the environment shape the places we create. With performance, sound, and public programmes, the pavilion becomes a living, shared space.
Jakkai Siributr at V&A.
All photos of the five key installations at the V&A are courtesy of the London Design Festival.
Studio Above&Below at V&A.
POLISH POSTERS NOW! at V&A.
