Virtual Design Festival

This week's VDF highlights include Yinka Ilori, OMA and Patternity

This week's VDF highlights include Yinka Ilori, OMA, Patternity and drag queen Peaches Christ

Week 12 was the penultimate week of the Virtual Design Festival and featured live talks with Design Indaba's Ravi Naidoo and OMA's David Gianotten, plus designer Yinka Ilori jogging across London during a relay panel discussion.

Virtual Design Festival, the world's first online design festival, runs until 10 July. For the full schedule of upcoming events, visit dezeen.com/vdf/schedule.


Monday 29 June

VDF Sports Day with Nelly Ben Hayoun: Designer and amateur boxer Nelly Ben Hayoun hosted an "energy-induced, power fuel-propelled, 2.5 hour, live marathon show", in which a panel of guests discussed sport's impact on design as a discipline and on society and political discourse as a whole.

Among the 12 speakers was Design Indaba founder Ravi Naidoo, Google creative lab director Tea Uglow, sneaker designer Aleali May, drag artist Joshua Grannell aka Peaches Christ and designer Yinka Ilori, who jogged through London over the course of the live stream and discussed the skate park he has been working on over the last year.


Anna Murray Screentime interview for VDFTuesday 30 June

Screentime with Patternity: In the latest episode of our live interview series, Patternity's Anna Murray discussed how patterns, both visual and societal, should be used and studied to bring about "more positive ways of living".

In a short presentation, she also looked back on some of the creative studio's most significant projects, including the Life Labyrinth created for last year's London Design Festival.


Wednesday 1 July

VDF x London Festival of Architecture: Social design and urbanism practice Migrant's Bureau shared its manifesto as part of the third and final instalment of our collaboration with the LFA.

Through design interventions and community workshops, the collective aims to "interpret the migratory experiences of everyday life, recognising the influence that culture, geography and social circumstances have on lived experiences of the city and its architecture".


Thursday 2 July

VDF x Friedman Benda: Rhode Island School of Design president Rosanne Somerson spoke to curator Glenn Adamson about how the university and its way of teaching and practising design are being transformed by the pandemic.

In the video interview, published as part of our collaboration with New York gallery Friedman Benda, Somerson describes Covid-19 as "the biggest challenge we've faced in our entire history as an institution".


VDF x The Artling Potato Head Studios resort

Friday 3 July

VDF x The Artling: OMA architect David Gianotten and Potato Head creative director Daniel Mitchell were among the panellists in a live-streamed discussion about how to integrate art into architecture.

The conversation was organised by Talenia Phua Gajardo of Singapore art platform The Artling and chaired by her in collaboration with Dezeen's editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs.


Previous weeks

Did you miss week 11? Read our summary of the highlights, including takeovers by the Design Museum and Serpentine Gallery as well as interviews with Carme Pinós and Rem Koolhaas.

Did you miss week ten? Read our summary of the highlights, including a live interviews with Lee Broom, a panel discussion featuring Space Copenhagen and Neri&Hu, plus the launch of our collaboration with Vitra.

Did you miss week nine? Read our summary of the highlights, including interviews Barnaba Fornasetti and Ini Archibong as well as a celebration of World Oceans Day and the 2020 AHEAD Americas awards.

Did you miss week eight? Read our summary of the highlights, including interviews with Ilse Crawford and Farshid Moussavi, plus a full-day takeover by Stockholm's ArkDes museum.

Did you miss week seven? Read our summary of the highlights, including an exclusive product launch and live interview with Tom Dixon as well as an all-star architects roundtable including Junya Ishigami and Counterspace.

Did you miss week five? Read our summary of the highlights, including interviews with Standard Architecture and Sauerbruch Hutton and the launch of an exclusive Archigram video series.

Did you miss week four? Read our summary of the highlights, including exclusive interviews with Carlo Ratti and Iris van Herpen, as well as a cocktail masterclass from the owner of Milan's Bar Basso.

Did you miss week three? Read our summary of the highlights, including a video message from Ben van Berkel and an exclusive screening of Gary Hustwit's Dieter Rams documentary.

Did you miss week two? Read the summary of the highlights from the second week, including Ron Arad, SO-IL, Kunlé Adeyemi, Nelly Ben Hayoun, Beatie Wolfe and Studio Drift.

Did you miss week one? Read the summary of the first week's highlights include live interviews with Li Edelkoort and Klein Dytham Architecture plus the now-legendary VDF launch movie.


Virtual Design Festival, the world's first digital design festival, runs from 15 April to 10 July 2020 and is sponsored by bathroom and kitchen manufacturer Grohe. For more information about VDF or to join the mailing list, email [email protected].