Guest Blogger: Jo Casley of furniture & design website, mydeco.com

This week marks the end of London Design Festival 2011, bringing to a close a smorgasbord of design delights, with almost 300 different events taking place across the capital.

The Festival is always a fun and inspiring – if hectic – fortnight, and this year it was especially interesting to see London’s design highlights through the eyes of a group of American design and style bloggers, here as part of ‘BlogTour 2011’ – the first cultural exchange of bloggers between the UK and US.

I had the priviledge working with Modenus who organized BlogTour 2011 on the London itinerary – and boy, did we squeeze a lot in! Here are a few highlights.

Textile Field by French designers Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec at the V&A museum is a creative and beautiful installation in the gallery’s Raphael Cartoons room. The gigantic upholstered boards reflect the Raphael canvas’ colours, and encourage visitors to view the wonderful paintings from a totally new perspective – sitting or lying down. It’s immersive and a very comfortable way to view art! (See it at the V&A until October 20th).

 
Image credit: Textile Field via Creative Review 

Also at the V&A, a real highlight for me was the interactive Beyond The Valley takeover in the Clore study, where visitors could experience the digitally printed wallpapers and fabrics, and design their own on special iPads.

Image Credit: Anna Zeuner at Arts Thread blog

Designersblock offered a rare chance to see inside a fascinating London building, the Farmiloe building in Clerkenwell. Originally a Victorian bathroom warehouse, it used to be the most heavily reinforced building in the city! A great place to see energetic student design.

 mydeco.com is the site set up by Brent Hoberman and Martha Lane-Fox of Lastminute.com fame. It aims to make home design easy by giving visitors the chance to visualise new furniture in their homes and the opportunity to compare and shop for products online. www.mydeco.com