The Fluxx Guide to LDF 2026: Projects on Our Radar, Part 2
Part two of our London Design Festival 2026 radar moves from rugs with seventy years of archive behind them to solo debuts in Southbank galleries, closing with a longer list of shows worth a mention on the way past. The Festival runs 12 to 20 September 2026 across eleven design districts.
Dates: 12–20 September 2026, individual run dates vary, see below
Districts: Chelsea, Brompton, Southbank, Shoreditch Design Week & Individual showrooms
Faye Toogood's Johnny Lights Up Borough
Photography, Johnny Faye Toogood Matthew Donaldson LDF 2026
Faye Toogood presents Johnny, a new sculptural lighting collection, at her own studio in Borough from 15 to 16 September. Comprising three forms, each piece pairs a steel frame with a scrunchable paper skin, hand-cut and sewn by traditional English shade makers, and is available in charcoal, steel or cream. Rather than a stand at a larger fair, the two-day showing continues Toogood's material-led, sculptural sensibility on her own terms, in her own space.
Tai Ping: Icons Underfoot, Seventy Years in Seven Rugs
Photography, Tai Ping LDF 2026, Conoid.
Tai Ping marks seven decades of rugmaking with Icons Underfoot, a gallery-style exhibition at its Fulham Road showroom from 12 to 20 September, with a launch evening on 17 September. Founded in Hong Kong in 1956 and credited with inventing the hand-tufting gun in 1960, the house has selected seven landmark designs from its archive: Conoid II, designed by George Nakashima for Tai Ping subsidiary Edward Fields in 1959; the sculptural floral Daisy from 2000; the camouflage-inspired Ephemera BO3 from 2010; the soft-focus Bokeh IV Risotto from 2016; the painterly Willow I from 2018; the graphic Zebra DIII Nocturne from 2022; and Alizea I, an undyed-fibre design from 2024's Biophilic Collection. Rather than treating the pieces as archival artefacts, the exhibition presents each as a living expression of craft still relevant to contemporary interiors.
Marc Phillips: Restraint, Rendered in Wool
Ziri by Marc Phillips, a hand-knotted Moroccan design defined by a subtle tone-on-tone chevron motif, crafted in softly textured brown wool.
American rug house Marc Phillips returns to Focus/26 at Design Centre Chelsea Harbour from 14 to 18 September with a curated edit of three new designs, each connected by a warm, earthy palette. Orah is a handwoven stripe kilim in irregular bands of brown, tan and rust; Ziri is a hand-knotted Moroccan design with subtle tone-on-tone chevron patterning in brown wool; and Mira, the collection's most graphic piece, sets a repeating diamond and leaf motif across rust, tan, olive and dusty purple. The edit reflects the house's longstanding approach to rugs that ground a room rather than dominate it.
Ruup & Form: A Debut Built from Craft and Contradiction
Photography, Ruup & Form Gallery,, Bodily Inbetweenness , Woo Jin Joo, 2026
London-based artist Woo Jin Joo brings her first solo gallery exhibition, Bodily Inbetweenness, to Ruup & Form from 11 September, with a private view on 10 September and a run continuing throughout the Festival and beyond. New and selected works span textiles, freehand machine embroidery, ceramics, sculpture and drawing, each exploring craft, materiality and transformation through a distinctly contemporary lens. It is a small, tightly focused show, and one worth seeking out precisely because it sits outside the Festival's larger commercial showcases.
Mint Gallery X Blueprint
Photography, HANN by Formsophy, Mint Gallery, Brompton
Mint Gallery presents Blueprint, an exhibition celebrating the reconfiguration of traditional craft techniques as the foundation for bold, contemporary design. Rather than treating heritage skills as something to move beyond, the show positions them as a technical and material inheritance, a working document for what comes next rather than a history to leave behind. New works by Daniel Stefanita, Masao Rong and Formsophy sit alongside selected upcoming talents, while a continued collaboration with ON&ON Designs brings a presentation of Polish design led by Studio Rygalik, building on last year's partnership.
Also on Our Radar
Photography, Max Radford Gallery x Christopher Farr, LDF26
A handful of further shows are worth building into any route through this year's Festival. Cassina opens its showroom for The Cassina Perspective, a look at its latest collections through the lens of the house's own design language, while Kartell marks The Shape of Now with the debut of its new Savoia chair.
In Shoreditch, independent gallerist Max Radford takes over rug brand Christopher Farr's showroom for a group exhibition, sitting alongside a run of material-led shows worth seeking out in the same district: The Strange Everyday's meditation on the objects of daily life, Front's collaboration with American biotech firm Biomason on tiles grown with the help of bacteria, the timber-focused group exhibition Wood for the Trees, and Porro's Everyday Sculptures, Precious Finishes, a study in surface, texture and material honesty. Each is a smaller, more concentrated read on the Festival's material-innovation theme than the headline showroom launches, and each rewards the ten minutes it takes to seek it out.
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