Reddress is a fascinating performance piece involving live music, innovative design, premium quality fabric and guaranteed audience participation. The latter is paramount to its success - it is this component that elevates a Reddress event from the accepted notions of "multi-media" presentation.

The concept is dynamic, ambitious, and shapes itself to each venue that is large enough to host it. Involving a mammoth 550 metres of red Kvadrat wool, spanning some 20 metres, Reddress incorporates a singer in the centre of a raised platform, accompanying musicians and giant 'pockets' in the folds of the dress for the audience to tuck themselves in to. The dress accommodates up to 238 people. You are no longer observing the performance as a separate entity - as you would a porcelain vase, or oil painting in a museum. Instead, you are directly feeding into the performance as the singer rotates herself around the room.

Redress is brought to the London Design Festival by the Finnish Institute as a precursor to next year's World Design Capital Helsinki 2012 activities. Vocalist, Emma Salokoski, guitarist, Jarmo Saari and the Britten Sinfonia all perform. And Salokoski's powerful renditions of contemporary folk with Saari's ambient textures on the Theremin, an invisible light wave synthesizer, creates an involving ethereal atmosphere. The audience are mesmerised, and the warmth generated by emphatic red lighting and the wool pockets makes for a uniquely intimate event. "It is about the music," says Art Director, Johan Olin. Whilst his wife, and designer, Aamu Song insists that, "the colour leads the way." In fact, it is neither static design, musical performance or fashion exhibition. Instead, a welcome blurring of the boundaries between all disciplines, and one that leaves the audience spellbound.

Reddress starts today and continues until Sunday 25^th September. Specific daytime events are free whilst the evening performances are ticketed. Wear your best socks, it is a strictly shoe-free zone.

Reddress.fi

York Hall. 5 Old Ford Rd. Bethnal Green, London E2 9PJ.

Given that in 2012 Helsinki will be crowned World Design Capital in mind, we already knew this city was strong on design. But these last few weeks it has been transformed into a hive of creative activities with the onset of Helsinki Design Week.

HDW centres on three main subjects: "biomimicry" (or observing how nature deals with things, and copying it), social innovation through participatory design and "the digital city", or how to put interactive technologies into use in an urban context.

Among the highlights is To Declare, an exhibition of products "with message" about climate change, water and eco-related issues, with displays conceived as contemporary art installations. An inspiring, suggestive visit where - according to the curator Kaj Kalin - the thread "is intuitive, our visitors will read between the lines".

Also, there is the tempting Design Market, a place to browse designer clothing, furniture and objects. And Habitare, the furniture and interior design fair.

And if you're thinking of heading over, don't forget the interesting parallel exhibits, some of them on Finnish designer's careers, past and present: See the review on Kaj Franck's ouvre for starters. Also check Finnish graphic design and poster art by the 6G group and Design Stories, an exhibition on the communal way of working by Musta Design. The menu goes on with many more courses of appetizing design, in galleries, open studio nights, seminars, lectures and so on, all topped off with HDW LIVE, a performative mix of music and top fashion design. All in all, a thrilling, brimming week.

Reduce, re-use, recycle. Reinvent. Hoxton Square concept store, KK Outlet, went on a mission to discover how differently we might work if we removed ourselves from the calculated world of machines and computers, for a change, and utilised our own hands and imaginations to create: A number of London's leading designers, artists and stylists were approached and challenged to repurpose everyday or found objects with this physicality in mind, creating entirely new items using as little additional materials as possible. Banana boxes transformed into bicycle mud-guards, paella pans into side tables, handle-bars into chandeliers, estate-agent signs into birdhouses, paintbrushes into coat hooks…and the list goes on.

As part of London's famed Design Week taking place in September, all the new creations will be on display at KK Outlet in a show entitled Object Abuse, and will feature pieces from the likes of Alexander Taylor, Dominic Wilcox, Michael Marriott, F.A.T, Peter Marigold and Max Lamb, to name a few. All the work is for sale through a silent auction, with the proceeds going to St Monica's of Hackney Primary School Art Department.

Next time, you'll think twice before you throw out those old wooden spoons.

Object Abuse is on at KK Outlet, 42 Hoxton Square, London, N1 6PB until 25 September.


Links:
http://www.kkoutlet.com/art/2011/object-abuse
http://www.alexandertaylor.com/collection/punch.html
http://www.dominicwilcox.com/
http://www.michaelmarriott.com/
http://fashionarchitecturetaste.com/
http://maxlamb.org/