The fifth edition of the London Design Biennale is taking place at Somerset House from 5 to 29 June 2025. The theme of this year's edition is "Surface Reflections," an invitation to explore "the dynamic interplay between internal experience and external influence." The curatorial proposal, set by British artist and designer Samuel Ross, encourages a focus on the underlying layers of the objects, systems, and spaces that shape our daily lives. The Biennale exhibition is a journey through 35 pavilions by countries, institutional design teams, and curators, presenting soundscapes, immersive experiences, and performances, as well as sculptural and evocative objects. To confront contemporary global challenges, topics include identity, memory, innovation, technology, craftsmanship, ecology, and belonging.
"Surface Reflections" invites international designers, makers, and audiences to explore how creativity is shaped by both inner experience and external influence. As Director Victoria Broackes explains, this fifth edition proposes a moment to pause and look beyond appearances, encouraging responses to global uncertainty through hopeful visions of a more equitable and connected world. Featuring material innovations and personal narratives, the Biennale highlights design's power to unite and imagine alternative futures. Artistic Director Samuel Ross adds that in turbulent times, creatives act as bridges, reflecting on urgent global issues and proposing solutions rooted in cultural and historical awareness.
Below is a selection of ten of these proposed perspectives, which, through their thought-provoking installations and narratives, offer a revealing look at the built environment.
The Recursion Project / Melek Zeynep Bulut
Melek Zeynep Bulut is a musical artist exploring how space shapes existence and subjectivity through sensory experience. "The Recursion Project" is an immersive, tesseract-inspired cube installation composed of handcrafted Turkish terracotta and mirrored surfaces, creating a suspended "cube within a cube" that virtually transcends physical form.
Memory Grid / Haitham Al-Busafi
Oman
"Memory Grid" transforms traditional Omani pottery into an immersive meditation on memory, legacy, and resource preservation. Through vessels rooted in craft and data metaphors, the installation invites to reflect on what humanity holds dear, past and present.
Records of Waiting: On Time and Ornament / Adrianna Gruszka, Maciej Moszant, Maciej Siuda
Poland
Rooted in Polish Highland craft traditions, "Records of Waiting: On Time and Ornament" reimagines ornamentation as a record of suspended time. The pavilion explores the politics and social inequalities of waiting through monumental woodcarving. The layered installation turns endurance into texture, with carved surfaces that register bureaucratic, social, and emotional dimensions of time.
Paper Clouds: Materiality in Empty Space / SEKISUI HOUSE - KUMA LAB
Japan
An homage to Washi paper's translucency and strength, the Japanese installation creates cloud-like forms and a recyclable paper dress for performance. Combining architecture, music, and fashion, it investigates materiality in emptiness and human interaction with nature-inspired design.
The Curiosity Cabinet / Liz Hingley, Egemen Kiziclan, Frank Menger, Sofie Boons, Alphabetical Studio
King's College London
"Waymarkers," presented by King's College London in The Curiosity Cabinet at 171 The Strand, features personal snapshots from hundreds of individuals with roots in over 40 countries. These intimate glimpses into everyday life, memory, and connection are displayed across various formats, including a mosaic, wearable pendants, and a large-scale projection, celebrating shared humanity through visual storytelling.
Living Assembly: Building With Biology / Northumbria University (Living Construction) and University College London (Beckett Lab)
The Northumbria University & UCL faculties pavilion showcases biologically grown materials such as mycelium, microbe-leather, and bacterial cement, merging biotechnology with architecture to propose living, adaptive future structures. The installation features both finished and evolving bio-materials with the ability to form new ecological niches in built environments.
Minerasophia: Underground Cycles / Male Uribe, Constanza Gaggero
Chile
"Minerasophia" is an art and design research project that presents natural minerals as material entities bearing unique forms of heritage, as well as natural and symbolic value. The exhibit's audiovisual installation represents the country's extractive landscapes, highlighting mineral life cycles and their potential to transform social concepts of "value" and "waste" in both environmental and cultural terms.
Human-Centred Design: Visuospace / Hee Sun (Sunny) Choi, Ka Ho (Kyle) Yu
Hong Kong
The Hong Kong pavilion visualizes visuospatial processes, movement, depth, structure, to propose more human-centered urban spaces. The installation reflects a neuroscientific exploration of spatial design that examines how emotional and cognitive responses influence perceptions of living and work environments.
Play Borderisms / Enigma Creative
Tijuana-San Diego
"Play Borderisms" is an audiovisual investigation of frontier life exploring identity, displacement, and resistance through layered "borderisms" that reflect emotional, cultural, and geopolitical experiences. The installation uses film, voice, image, and rhythm to render visible the human stories often hidden in border dynamics.
Coastal Connections / Install Archive
World Monuments Fund and English Heritage
The World Monuments Fund and English Heritage institutions' pavilion focuses on coastal resilience by uniting over 50 heritage sites threatened by climate change into a global knowledge-sharing network. The installation spotlights seven key locations, sharing community-led conservation approaches to rising sea levels and intensified storms.
In other news, pressing challenges in contemporary housing and urbanism are discussed in a recent interview with Pritzker Prize winner Riken Yamamoto for Louisiana Channel. Meanwhile, various international events have inspired the design and construction of pavilions addressing current global issues, including the 24 interventions of Concéntrico 2025, the two selected pavilions for the TAC! Urban Architecture Festival in Spain, and the inaugural 'Slow Pavilions' set to be built for the first edition of the Copenhagen Architecture Biennale.
