100% Design Exhibition at Earls Court

Last Friday, I jumped on the train after a meeting and headed up to London to the Earls Court Exhibition Centre to see the 100% Design exhibition.  For those who don't know about this annual exhibition, it is a mainly a showcase of architecture, interior design and furniture featuring companies and individuals from around the world.  But every year, some designers of textiles, surfaces, product and even jewellery take a stand.  This year, Chinese design featured quite strongly, but I found the stands from South America the most interesting - Argentinian and Chilean designers particularly were producing some innovative work.  I was most interested though in the Design Activism stand and was delighted to see that socially responsible design, localism and even anti-design was being promoted by young designers.  See www.community21.org/about/.  One stand displayed hundreds of broken electrical items and visitors were invited to bring their broken household electrics and other items for repair, or re-use.  Designers were turning their creative skills to finding new uses for old or defunct goods and, at the same time, training unemployed people in new skills.