I Visited Brompton Design District During London Design Festival 2026 — These Are the Designs and Ideas That Stayed With Me
From new Milan introductions to a reading room and a workshop in a mews garage, my highlights shared an interest in how design acquires its character
My visit to Brompton Design District during London Design Festival 2026 began with the Italian showrooms. At Molteni&C, Kartell, and Cassina, three chairs offered quite different propositions for a room — generous upholstery, an economical metal outline, and a decidedly expressive archive revival.
Beyond them, the exhibitions of “Perfectly Imperfect” opened up the story behind the objects. Moving between the two, I found a thread worth following — the relationship between a designer’s intentions and the materials that give those ideas form.
Molteni&C Gives Softness Some Structure
Introduced at Milan Design Week 2026, Cristián Mohaded’s Corsetto armchair was my focus at Molteni&C. Its generous, textile-covered volumes are held in place by a leather-covered base and bands that rise around the arms, giving the chair its corseted profile. The version I saw paired warm, highly textured upholstery with dark brown leather, making the contrast between softness and structure especially apparent.
I loved how the dark leather gives structure to the chair’s generous, tactile softness.
Kartell Makes a Fine Line Count
Following its Salone del Mobile presentation, Savoia made its UK debut at Kartell’s London flagship. The brand’s first collaboration with Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby pairs a slender die-cast aluminum frame with seat and back options in recycled technopolymer, curved wood, or leather.
Its open structure offers a counterpoint to more enveloping seating. I’m drawn to the way that fine outline gives a dining chair definition without making a table setting feel crowded. It’s a reminder that furniture can hold its own without taking up much visual space.
Cassina Gives an Archive New Life
At Cassina, I found myself immediately drawn to Dalila. It isn’t an entirely new design, but a return to Gaetano Pesce’s original drawings from 1980, carefully reimagined by Cassina in collaboration with Studio Pesce. Made from flexible polyurethane foam and finished with a thin, colored elastomeric coating, its curved form has the slightly fluid quality that makes Pesce’s work so recognizable. The 2026 reissue also takes Dalila outdoors for the first time.
I have always liked furniture that can interrupt a room a little, and Dalila does exactly that. I can imagine a single chair placed at the head of a more formal dining table, where its eccentric silhouette would make the whole arrangement feel less predictable. That, to me, is when an archive reissue feels relevant — when it can still change the mood of an interior today.
The Most Interesting Ideas Were Still Taking Shape
After the showrooms, I moved into Perfectly Imperfect, the 2026 Brompton Design District theme curated by Alex Tieghi-Walker. Here, the focus shifted toward experimentation — the revisions, material discoveries, and intuitive decisions that happen while an idea is still finding its form.
What I liked about the theme was that imperfection never felt like something to celebrate for its own sake. Instead, it encouraged me to look more closely at how things had been made and to notice where the hand, personality, or curiosity of the designer remained visible.
The Reading Room at 36 Thurloe Place
My first stop was The Reading Room, on the ground floor of 36 Thurloe Place. Presented by TIWA Select in partnership with Tenderbooks, it brought together furniture and objects by 12 queer artists and designers, including Rich Aybar, Tino Seubert, and James Cherry, alongside books exploring art, architecture, design, and queer culture.
I liked that the books didn’t feel like styling props — they were part of how the room was intended to be experienced. It felt less like a display to move quickly through and more like an invitation to pause, look properly, and spend time with different perspectives.
Studio Iron Made a Case for Rooms With Personality
At Studio Iron, founded by Isamaya Ffrench, furniture sat alongside sculpture, textiles, and objects by contributors working across art, fashion, and design.
What stayed with me was the freedom of that mix. The pieces didn’t need to share one obvious style to make sense together — each brought its own material language and personality. It made me think about the homes I’m most drawn to, where objects have been chosen individually over time rather than selected to complete a perfectly coordinated scheme.
Rafael Prieto Looked at the Dining Room Differently
In The Lavery’s private dining room, Rafael Prieto’s On the Sunset, Which Is Only One explored how light and perspective can shape the atmosphere of a room. At its center were six sculptural chairs by Prieto’s studio, Savvy, each responding to a different position of the sun, accompanied by Marrow lights created by Prieto and Loup Sarion.
After spending the first part of my visit looking closely at individual chairs, I found myself thinking here about what happens when several distinct designs meet around one table. The room suggested that dining furniture doesn’t always need to match exactly — a strong shared idea can create just as much cohesion.
TOAST Brought the Focus Back to the Maker
At Hazel Studio, TOAST’s New Makers presentation introduced work by Jacob Marks, Yuichi Romita, Egle Silko, Hannah Watts, and Linnan Ye. The collection moved between wood-fired and wheel-thrown ceramics, pine-resin vessels, and textured sterling-silver jewelry.
These were smaller objects, but they asked for a closer look. I was particularly interested in how much character came from the materials themselves — the marks left by firing, an irregular surface, or the unfamiliar quality of pine resin. These are the kinds of pieces I would use sparingly in a room, giving one object enough space to hold attention rather than surrounding it with too much styling.
Finding Form Let the Material Decide
My final stop was Byron Pritchard’s Finding Form in a garage in Cromwell Mews. During August, Pritchard and his team worked from a single slab of sycamore using only hand tools, without drawings or a predetermined design. The objects developed through their direct response to the timber.
Of everything I saw, this felt like the clearest expression of Perfectly Imperfect. The material wasn’t being forced to follow a finished image — it was allowed to influence what the final object became. I left thinking that good design doesn’t always begin with having every answer. Sometimes it begins with paying close enough attention to recognize what is already there.
Brompton offered only one view of this year’s London Design Festival. For another side of the city’s design story, explore the Chelsea Design District highlights through Maya Glantz’s eyes.
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