With the buzz of the London Design Festival pulsing through our inboxes this week, offering every design experience under the Autumn sun, we've sought out a more challenging and experimental exhibition for those of us in need of something a little different:

London-based Spanish designers, El Ultimo Grito, will be launching their newly commissioned works from their Imaginary Architecture series at Spring Projects in NW London - a truly inspiring gallery space that showcases innovative projects time and time again.

This exhibition is no exception and features an imaginary landscape of new design objects - from cardboard and fibreglass tables suspended from the ceiling to incredible glass sculptures that play on these table surfaces - these conceptual and thoroughly inviting architectural compositions create a new skyline and topology that challenges they way in which we view the world around us and interact with the products at our disposal.

El Ultimo Grito are renowned for offering new ways to live, experience and communicate, and are influenced by everything around them: art, philosophy, popular culture, food, design and science and these new design installations are sure to jog the old imaginations and keep us coming back for more of their alternative medicine.

Spring Projects, 10 Spring Place, London, NW5 3BH

Escape Into the Upper Air is on from: 9 September to 18 October 2011

Pouring over Alan Fletcher's book, "The Art of Looking Sideways", it's hard to believe that 10 years has passed since its perception-shifting pages launched on our bookshelves. It is as fresh, insightful and witty today as we remember it being then. Chock-full of collected graphic ephemera from all around the world, and spanning over 30 years of looking at the world around him differently, Fletcher's very special tome, which has inspired people the world over, will now open its pages and expose it's own inspiration to us very lucky Londoners:

Kemistry Gallery in Shoreditch will be hosting an exhibition entitled Mind Over Matter, bringing together a rare collection of original material, curiosities, notes and scribbles from Fletcher's archives, alongside copies of the book itself, exhibition posters and limited edition prints.

A true icon, Fletcher transcended convention and made us all look twice: from collecting scrawls on napkins to forming legendary design consultancies like Pentagram, and art-directing Phaidon books, to name just a few of his hobbies.



"Mind Over Matter": Alan Fletcher's The Art Of Looking Sideways

Kemistry Gallery: 43 Charlotte Road, London EC2A 3PD

25 August - 1 October

Monday-Saturday 10.00 - 18.00

Henrietta Thompson

Bicycles are brilliant, but best left outside. Until now. New designs from Quarterre mean the hallway now makes a better bikeshed than ever

We are always drawn to new and innovative storage solutions that address the living and breathing piles of just-had-to-haves that grow in our homes, and this is by far one of the most zen we have seen: London design studio, Quarterre, made up of four designers, Clive, Daniele, Jason and Nick, hailing from multi-disciplinary backgrounds, have come up with sleek and sculptural bike stands that will keep your bike (and you) neat and safe in your urban home environment.

During the London Design Festival in September, three of their new designs entitled, Branchline, Shadow and Hood, will be unveiled as part of their Furniture for Bikes range, designed to seamlessly unite cycling and interior design. Made exclusively in the UK with craftsmanship and detailing at the heart of the operation, the pieces are made from steel, leather and bamboo with the utmost attention to aesthetics, functionality and materials. So pop down to the cult East London cyclists' hub, look mum no hands!, and  join us in celebrating the end of tripping over your bike on your way to your morning coffee fix.



Look mum no hands! 49 Old Street, London, EC1V 9HX
18-25 September 2011
7.30am-10.00 pm Monday -Friday,
9.00am-10.00pm Saturday,
9.30am - 10.00pm Sunday

Text by Jacki Lang
Images courtesy of Quarterre