August design news: puppets, a moveable monument and how to combat a heatwave

In this month’s design news, learn how to beat a heat wave, what a Rolls-Royce food truck would look like and where to see the best puppets in the UK. Also make sure you visit London Design Festival next month – the event runs from 14 to 22 September across the UK’s capital.

Pillars of society

Decisions about what or whom we memorialise are always political. They often age very badly, but the latest show by the Black Reconstruction Collective (BRC) has a new take on this historical problem. The BRC is a group founded in 2020 by leading Black American architects and designers, including Walter Hood, Amanda Williams and Olalekan Jeyifous, which promotes and supports work by members of the African diaspora. Their latest project, Unmonument, is a touring exhibition​ which features a black industrial lift as a base structure to be modified and changed each time it changes location under the creative direction of one of five architects. Events held around each installation will also be decided by the five who include Jeyifous, Felecia Davis and J Yolande Daniels.

“By adapting a refurbished maintenance lift as a mobile site of intervention, and then passing it from one Black artist to another, the industrial object is transformed into a powerful, yet accessible, symbol of resilience,” says Jeyifous. “At the same time, this approach and object nod

a history of violence, ​ extraction and exclusion in this country and in this field, through which Black creativity has persevered and flourished”

The Unmonument will travel through New York state, Georgia, California and Pennsylvania until June 2025

Hand in glove

Lyndie Wright and her magical puppets have been making childhood more magical since 1961, when her marionettes found a permanent home at the Little Angel Theatre in London. From her early years in South Africa to joining a touring production with puppet master – and her future husband – John Wright, she had always created string puppets and marionettes. As well as building the theatre from scratch, she founded her own workshop to create props for film and stage. Her daughter, Sarah, has followed in her footsteps and founded the Curious School of Puppetry; her son Joe is a film director. This summer, her career is celebrated at an exhibition at Make Hauser & Wirth Somerset gallery where visitors can see her work for stage and screen, including Macbeth witches, Oskar from The Tin Drum and Roxanne from Cyrano . The space will also feature a reconstruction of a part of her workshop featuring tools, unfinished puppets and posters from theatres.

“Lyndie is an amazing designer who puts a spirit into everything she creates,” says Sarah Wright. “People feel it as soon as they see or touch her puppets, they have a life of their own.”

The Curious Art of Puppetry is at Make Hauser & Wirth Somerset until 13 October

Style and substance

As London Fashion Week celebrates its 40th anniversary, the industry is looking to the future, as well as honouring the past. One designer who’s making positive changes is Feben . The Ethiopian designer grew up in Sweden and is now based in London after training at Central Saint Martins. Beyoncé has worn her clothes and she was the Isabella Blow scholar at CSM. Feben has worked with artisans in Accra, Ghana, and her structural silk designs have also shown her deep fascination with fabric. But for her LFW collection, Feben will work with OnceMore , a Swedish pioneer in circular fashion and sustainable textile production. OnceMore is the world’s first large-scale process for recycling blended fabrics, as well as wood from responsibly managed forests which is used to produce high-quality textile pulp. Feben said she was drawn to the company when she discovered it was based close to where she grew up in Sweden.

“I’m hoping more brands, designers and students will become more aware of where their fabrics come from and finally connect the dots between fabric suppliers, stores and consumers,” she said.

Tina Lemke, brand experience manager for OnceMore, hopes the collaboration with Feben will highlight issues around textile recycling.

“With Feben’s creative passion, we hope to highlight new ways to use viscose and to spread awareness about OnceMore’s sustainable fabrics.”

London Fashion Week runs 13 – 17 September

Inspirational bookends

This year’s Dundee Design Festival in Scotland hosts an exhibition of bookends inspired by two journalists working in the 1890s. Bessie Maxwell and Marie Imandt were local writers employed by newspaper publisher DC Thomson. Maxwell and Imandt travelled the world and wrote about the lives of the women they met for The Courier and The Weekly News . Now 20 Scotland-based designers have reimagined the humble bookend using the tome Dundee’s Two Intrepid Ladies: A Tour Round the World by D C Thomson’s Female Journalists in 1894 as source.

Featured designers include Steven and Ffion Blench of Chalk Plaster, who used Chinese graphite for their bookends – inspired by its use in pencils. Designer Jennifer Gray has co-designed with two female writers working in Scotland, Gabriella Bennett and Eilidh Akilade. Her bookends are cast from each writer’s dominant hand.

Dundee Design Festival creative director Stacey Hunter said: “The bookend as a design object is a delightful concept. At once functional and decorative. As an astute designer observed to me recently, bookends are like jewellery for your home. Ultimately, every bookend has a story and we wanted to invite some of Scotland’s most interesting and inventive designers to tell their own.”

Bookends, Dundee Design Festival 2024 is 23-29 September. Full programme of free events and exhibitions at dundeedesignfestival.com

Hot tips

As the number of heatwaves increases, the need for affordable and effective solutions to regulate the temperature of buildings becomes more urgent. One British engineer and environmentalist is experimenting with different ways to cool our houses without incurring high costs or complicated building works. Tom Greenhill has launched Heatwave Toolkit this month, a platform dedicated to sharing low-effort, low-cost ways to combat a heatwave. Ideas range from adding external blinds to coating windows with yoghurt to prevent solar heat.

Greenhill is currently looking for funding for laboratory testing to validate some of his ideas, but anyone can now check out his ideas online.

“Heatwave Toolkit grew out of my frustration with the lack of awareness of available tools, products and techniques for mitigating extreme heat in existing homes. Air conditioning will cool the privileged but will not work for the many – or the environment. This toolkit is a direct response to that.”

For more information, go to heatwavetoolkit.com or instagram.com/heatwavetoolkit

Creative drive

In a new art book, Brussels-based film director, photographer and car enthusiast Mr François answers the automobile questions you never thought to ask. What would it be like if Ferrari made a camper van? How cool would a Mini stretch limousine look? Mr François – also known as François Mercier – trained himself as a ‘promptographer’ (a creative who uses AI and word descriptions to build images) and came up with some amazing new car models. The images in Secret Cars: 300 Promtographs, published this month, show models that may not be real but are a convincing case that they deserve to exist. A Rolls-Royce food truck would be a great addition to your local farmer’s market. A Ferrari grocery van would get deliveries done in style and with speed.

Secret Cars by Mr François is published by Luster Publishing