With three new venues, Clerkenwell Design Week returns with its largest edition

Hearty swathes of pink signalling a smorgasbord of everything design flush London's Clerkenwell every year, manifesting the annual edition of the Clerkenwell Design Week, one of the UK's most anticipated and important design events. Since 2009, CDW has expanded its offerings on the evolving nature of design, its synergy with allied creative disciplines and the value it brings to improving everyday lives. This year's edition, stated to be the largest to date, both in terms of its scale and content, will be hosted from May 20 – 22, 2025, across a host of historic landmarks and contemporary spaces.

New trends, talents and ideas are set to take centre stage, bringing public art installations, brand displays and design conversations across 16+ venues and 160+ local design showrooms. A treat for the design discerning audience, works from an array of disciplines including workspace interiors, lighting design, furniture design, product design, building materials, architecture finishes and hardware will be presented by leading design brands across various venues in EC1. STIR, a distinguished media partner with Clerkenwell Design Week 2025, combs through a multitude of offerings, bringing the best of activations to look out for.

Having seen steady growth since its inception, CDW continues to serve both as a protagonist and a facilitator, bringing the design community together. With Clerkenwell, home to a disproportionately high number of architecture and design studios, hosting the event there is an added advantage, in fostering innovation and collaboration among creatives and design brands.

Continuing on its recurring thread of foregrounding site-specific installations, having previously hosted a kaleidoscopic intervention by Morag Myerscough in 2023 and a light grid system by Ben Cullen Williams in 2024, this year's highlight is a 'rippling building' by British artist and sculptor Alex Chinneck. The artwork, titled A night on the tiles and a weak at the knees, reconfigures a four-storey brick facade of a building within the Charterhouse Square, a 14th-century microcosm of London's multilayered history, taking cues from its surrounding Georgian architecture. 320 metres of repurposed steel salvaged from the demolition of a building in London and bespoke bending windows, doors and bricks compose Chinneck's signature urban illusionism, laced with a historic bent.

Another installation to watch out for is an immersive soundscape inside the Clerkenwell House of Detention: Feel the Pull by creative studio Pixel Artworks constitutes a series of magnetically sewn visuals in flux, pushing and pulling one deeper into the experience as one navigates the vaulted interiors of the former 17th-century prison.

Putting forth the ingenuity of building materials in crafting curious pieces of work, Brick from a Stone: Arch Revival is a pavilion design conceived by architectural firm Hawkins\Brown and engineered by Webb Yates, in collaboration with British stone suppliers Albion Stone and Hutton Stone. The installation is composed of a pair of four-metre-high freestanding vaulted arches, each arch crafted from a single layer of stone bricks; while one will be a pale buff Darney Heritage sandstone from Northumberland, the other will showcase Heritage Portland Stone bricks from Albine Stone's mine in Dorset.

Speaking of product offerings at the Clerkenwell Design Week 2025, major Scandinavian design studios and brands are set to showcase their latest collections. HAY is bringing new works to the MillerKnoll St John's Square showroom by various distinguished designers, including the likes of Erwan Bouroullec, Doshi Levian and Niels Jørgen Haugesen. At the Old Sessions House, String Furniture will make its CDW debut. At the same venue, Swedish rug company Kasthall will honour its 135th anniversary with a new collection that reinterprets its celebrated Goose Eye pattern. More intriguing textiles will be shown by Bolon on Northburgh Street. The made-to-measure outdoor rug collection, as per the brand, allows "users to add texture, luxurious colours and depth to any environment."

Lighting, too, will enthral the visitors at the upcoming design week with its dynamic spatial influencing qualities and contributions to the ecology at CDW. Muuto will bring its sculptural new Beam and Strand table lamps, designed by Tom Chung and Benjamin Hubert, respectively. Whereas, Mater's Terra lighting collection by OEO Studio, made of recycled e-waste and coffee shell waste, will inspire a collective change.

Positioning new narratives around domesticity and workspace design is also anticipated as a key tenet of this year's presentation. Some works that fall under this umbrella include a new kitchen furniture range by Pluck, combining naturally coloured Douglas Fir veneers with a pared-back structural aesthetic, a new steel-framed seating by Origin Furniture featuring tech-knit fabric, a series of wall coverings by Larsen and new print collections of rugs and fabrics by Zitozza.

In addition to the distinct design installations and product presentations across the event, CDW will also bring a host of conversations and dialogues, seeking thought-provoking ideas and concerns on design and its intrinsic impact on our lives.