Launched in 2003, London Design Festival has grown into one of the world’s leading design events, celebrating the city as a global hub of creativity. Each September, the festival transforms London into a stage for design across disciplines, drawing together practitioners, thinkers, and audiences from around the world. Now in its twenty-third edition, taking place from 13 until 21 September 2025, the festival continues to shape London’s role as a creative capital, where design is positioned at the intersection of culture, commerce, and innovation. From large-scale public commissions to intimate exhibitions, it provides a platform for design as both industry and art, imagination and function.
Among the many international voices participating in the 2025 edition, Arab artists and designers bring distinct perspectives shaped by heritage, memory, and resilience.
OLIVIAKL – The Phoenician Object
Presented at House of ICON in Shoreditch, The Phoenician Object is a collection of collectible furniture by Lebanese Australian architect Olivia Akl. Through architectural arches, classical columns, and terracotta vessels, the works uncover feminine motifs embedded in East Mediterranean forms. By weaving narrative into design, the series reinterprets Phoenician antiquity as contemporary art, exploring cultural identity through objects that blur the boundaries between functionality and storytelling.
Jumana Emil Abboud – The Water Diviners Trail
Developed during the artist’s Jameel Fellowship residency at the V&A, The Water Diviners Trail leads visitors through eleven objects shaped by water. From lockets to embroidered threads, each artefact carries unseen histories and hidden currents of memory. Abboud’s prompts invite reflection and personal storytelling, tracing how myth, legend, and landscape intertwine. Her practice extends into performance, with a spoken-word storytelling event at the V&A’s Friday Late on 19 September.
Rana Haddad and Pascal Hachem – Debris of Text and Eyeglasses
In Debris of Text and Eyeglasses, Lebanese artists Rana Haddad and Pascal Hachem document the human scale of the 2020 Beirut Port explosion. Walking through the city’s wreckage, they photographed spectacles blown from people’s faces, printing these fragile images on delicate glass panels. Combined with fragments of text, the installation captures both devastation and vulnerability, offering a quiet yet haunting reflection on the impact of the blast and the negligence behind it.
Ramzi Mallat – Not Your Martyr
Alongside Haddad and Hachem, Ramzi Mallat presents Not Your Martyr, a counter-monument marking five years since the Beirut Port explosion. The work takes the form of vibrant glass ma’amoul – traditional Lebanese shortbread shared across religious divides – reimagined as fragile memorials. Both tender and defiant, the installation commemorates lives lost while questioning the politics of memory in Lebanon, set against the layered anniversaries of civil war and catastrophe.
Together, these works form Counter-Monuments, Beirut, a display that speaks to fragility, remembrance, and resilience.
Location: London, UK
Date: 13 until 21 September 2025