The Fluxx Guide to LDF 2026: Projects on Our Radar, Part One
The Collaborations Design Lovers Won't Want to Miss This September
Ahead of London Design Festival's twenty-fourth edition, running 12 to 20 September 2026, THE FLUXX has been tracking the collaborations, launches and showroom takeovers worth building an itinerary around. In this first instalment: two British institutions sharing a bed, a chandelier that becomes an architecture, a Brutalist landmark reimagined as furniture, and the Tramshed cluster where three major brands are showing at once.
London Design Festival
Dates: 12–20 September 2026, individual run dates vary, see below
Districts: King's Cross, Shoreditch Design Week, Covent Garden, the Barbican
Lee Broom: Chant, Fully Expanded
Photography, Lee Broom Portrait, The chant Chambers
At his three-address Rivington Street showroom, Lee Broom expands Chant, one of his most recognisable lighting designs, from a single chandelier into a full family of illuminated forms, on show 15 to 20 September. Oversized chandelier compositions, sculptural wall lights and architectural pendant structures that connect at right angles sit alongside a new smoked-glass finish, one designed to evoke the glamour of late-1970s interiors. First unveiled as part of Broom's Divine Inspiration collection at Milan Design Week in 2022, Chant helped establish glass-block lighting as a direction now visible across contemporary interiors; this expansion, staged across a series of distinct chambers, is its most ambitious outing yet.
Vitra at Tramshed: The Art of the Seesaw
Photography, Vitra Bascule highback and bench, iroko cream tabouret metallique.
Vitra's Shoreditch showroom becomes a showcase for new typologies and re-editions from 15 to 19 September. The headline launch is Bascule, a lounge chair developed with Berlin studio Œ, its loosely fitted cover and weight-responsive seat mechanism moving between upright and deeply reclined positions with a fluidity the brand likens to a seesaw. Alongside it, a re-edition of Verner Panton's 1975 Panton Cubes, produced with Verner Panton Design AG to mark the designer's centenary, arrives as four animal-sculpture kits, while extensions to the Mikado, Mynt and Anagram families broaden each collection into new settings, from an upholstered barstool to a compact public lounge chair. Products go on general sale from 3 September.
Artek x Hender Scheme: When Finnish Birch Meets Japanese Leather
Photography left, Artek + Hender Scheme by Ichiro Mishima. Right, Artek Zebra 2026 in situ Bench 167 Black and white Zebra Pendant Light A110 brick, by Bernhard Forstén
Also at Tramshed, Finnish house Artek unveils its collaboration with Tokyo leather shoemaker Hender Scheme, spanning furniture, lighting and accessories built from Finnish birch and vegetable-tanned leather. Familiar Alvar and Aino Aalto forms gain fitted leather "shoes" at their L-Legs, while Hender Scheme's NEW CRAFT approach reworks Alvar Aalto's Pendant Light A330, Golden Bell. The showcase also marks eighty years of Ilmari Tapiovaara's Domus Chair with a refreshed selection of upholstery, and introduces a new brown-and-white colourway of Aino Aalto's 1935 Zebra textile. The full Artek x Hender Scheme collection launches globally on 10 October.
Aram x arflex: Seventy Years of Italian Upholstery, Under One Roof
Photography, Arflex Marius&Marius, design Mario Marenco 1970
Aram's Covent Garden showroom hosts an extensive Arflex pop-up on its first floor throughout the Festival and beyond, running until January 2027. The Italian brand, sold by Aram since the 1990s, shows 1970s archive pieces, including Mario Marenco's Marius&Marius and Marenco sofas, alongside its 2026 launches: the Càmila sofa, Pair dining table and Antea dining chairs among them. Co-owner Patrizia Colombo has described the presentation as a dialogue between iconic works from arflex's history and its newest collections, one that traces how timeless design evolves without losing what defines it.
FLOOR_STORY x Sancal: Five Rugs, Five Distinct Voices
Lakwena Maciver,FLOOR_STORY
FLOOR_STORY returns to Cairo Studios from 15 to 19 September with five new rug collaborations, shown within roomsets built alongside Spanish furniture brand Sancal and curated by Trifle* Creative. Artist Lakwena Maciver introduces neon shades to the brand's palette with HOME PEACE, while Coco Lom's East London Lines draws on the Overground's architecture, House of Quinn's Julius Arthur hand-knots his first rug in Nepal, Les Keepers' Jogakbo celebrates togetherness through hand-painted linework, and POoR Collective's POWER is flat-woven in Mirzapur as a tribute to the deck-access tower blocks, among them Trellick Tower, that shape its design.
Holte x Palet: Textile Translated into Tile
Kitchen studio Holte and Dutch tile brand Palet join forces at Holte's canal-side Hackney showroom from 15 to 19 September, translating classic textile traditions, moquette, gingham, ombré, basketweave and Welsh blankets, alongside the work of Josef and Anni Albers and Marianne Straub, into five custom-glazed tile combinations. Shown as two kitchen splashbacks alongside Palet's exhibition boards, the edit can be ordered directly through Palet's online design tool. The presentation also features Hand & Eye Studio's new I-beam light, designed with Mentsen and The Paper Foundation.
Holte, Unit G5, Northside Studios, 16–29 Andrews Road, London E8 4QF
Made x Barbican: Brutalism, Brought Home
Homeware brand Made has spent months in the Barbican's archives for a 23-piece collection that translates the estate's sculptural concrete forms, and the largely unsung work of 1960s show-home designer Miriam Howitt, into furniture, lighting, textiles and accessories for sale now. The Dual accent chair takes its silhouette from the estate's concrete pillars, the Plinth coffee table nods to the sunken seating pods by the Barbican lake, and the Coffer ceiling and wall lights echo the building's waffle-grid ceilings, while a deep-pile Brute rug in ochre and white revives the bold patterned carpets Howitt once used to ground the estate's plain off-white flats. To mark the launch, Made has built a free installation into the Barbican Centre's Level G Hub Space for the Festival, running alongside the collection's debut at Made.com and in the Barbican Shop.
Vispring x Tom Dixon: A New Chapter for Two British Institutions
Photography, Vispring x Tom Dixon.
Vispring, the Plymouth bedmaker marking its 125th anniversary this year, brings its collaboration with Tom Dixon to the designer's King's Cross flagship from 12 to 20 September. Have You Seen the Light? sets the collection's Heart headboard, upholstered in bold pink, alongside the bestselling Fat Bed, following earlier stops in Milan and Copenhagen. Four new headboards and one bed, drawn from Dixon's Fat, Groove and Wingback ranges, translate Vispring's hand-tied pocket-sprung construction, unchanged in essential character since 1901, into a body of work that Global Marketing Director Clare Schifano has described as built on "joint British heritage and dedication to craftsmanship." Find it at 4-10 Bagley Walk, N1C 4DH.
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