For the 2011 London Design Festival, Bar Alto has paired up with DesignMarketo to present a series of design commissions. Inspired by the Milan institution Bar Basso (and its famous Negroni), the pop up bar, shop and workshop has also invited the public to enjoy a selection of brews and cocktails, including as much Campari-based refreshment as its Italian counterpart. Among the contributing designers are Harry Thaler, Ally Capellino, Maria Jeglinska, Loris & Livia, Use Dev Org, Tomas Alonso, Nitzan Cohen, Lars Frideen, Chiara Onida, Peter Marigold, Jasleen Kaur, Max Fromlend and Michael Marriott. Also participating are Olivier Lelloche and Olivier Leburn, who has produced an exquisite installation.

Their second instalment, De Sthil Camp, uses steam to create on the spot furniture and food, in addition to a sauna.

We've heard that Bar Basso's owner, Maurizio Stocchetto, will be paying a visit during the Design Festival. Furthermore, contributing friends and designers have produced Duralex inspired vessels for the Bar Alto drink, served by DesignMarketo. Located on Redchurch Street (E2 7DP) from 20 - 25 September.

Text by Anna Fredrikke Bjerke

Images by Amandine Alessandra

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