The Ripple Effect by Alicja Patanowska at the V&A – Courtesy of the London Design Festival 2025.
Design. At the V&A during this year’s London Design Festival, Polish artist Alicja Patanowska unveils The Ripple Effect, a poetic reflection on water and shared resources. Crafted from 2,000 hand-thrown tiles, the installation forms a flowing plateau with a functioning fountain guiding water into the pond of the Madejski Garden. Both sculpture and social space, it invites visitors to sit, recline, and touch—transforming sustainability research into a tactile, communal experience rooted in craft and care.
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Courtesy of the London Design Festival 2025.
Born from Patanowska’s ongoing research, The Ripple Effect is also an experiment in material transformation. “I began working with clay containing material from the Żelazny Most reservoir, shaping it into ceramic tiles by hand,” she told Archipanic. “The work grew out of my fascination with craft, care for the environment, and the idea that even discarded matter can be given new meaning and life.
Each tile carries traces of this process, its colour and texture inseparable from the material’s origins. “Rather than serving as decoration, the colour is the result of transformation, reinforcing the sustainability message,” she explains.
Courtesy of the London Design Festival 2025.
Water is at the heart of the installation, both physically and symbolically. It flows through the fountain and glistens across the tiles, while also evoking the larger cycle of life on Earth. As Patanowska reminds us, water is finite, endlessly circulating and always returning—just like the environmental and social consequences of our choices. In this way, The Ripple Effect becomes more than a sculpture: it is a reminder that every action, however small, sends ripples through the world around us.
Photo by Peter Kelleher © – Victoria & Albert Museum.
The installation also carries echoes of William Morris’s belief in craft as a means to foster social bonds and ethical meaning. Patanowska builds on this tradition with her gentle call to awareness. “Companies produce what we buy,” she reflects. “I encourage people to see resources as treasures—precious gifts of nature, as craft has done for centuries.”
Photo by Peter Kelleher © – Victoria & Albert Museum.
With The Ripple Effect, Patanowska encourages visitors not to act from fear but from tenderness and attentiveness. Sitting on its surface, feeling the cool ceramic underhand, one is reminded that we are all connected—to the Earth, to water, and to each other.
Photo by Peter Kelleher © – Victoria & Albert Museum.
Photos are courtesy of the artist and the London Design Festival.
Courtesy of the London Design Festival 2025.
