London Design Festival 2015

Tinted Perspex Art Installation V&A London 2015We love the venerable yet completely contemporary V&A and we love it even more during the annual London Design Festival when it becomes the creative hub of the festival.

Our favourite installation this year would have to be the wonderful 'Mise en Abyme' by designers Laetitia de Allegri and Matteo Fogale which made use of our signarture material: perspex or acrylic glass.

Cut out sheets of various tints of perspex were arranged so as to create a tunnel and designed to distort perspective across the bridge that links the V&A museum's Medieval and Renaissance sculpture galleries.

Stained glass was used a lot during the Renaissance but the designers chose perspex as an alternative to glass because it has the same characteristics and beautiful colours but without the fragility or weight, contrasting with the heavy marble all around.

The irregular openings cut out from each panel gradually become smaller along the route while the tints become darker, exaggerating the perspective when looking through the tunnel formed by the overlapping sheets. The grout lines of tiles lining the bridge further enhance the illusion of exaggerated depth, creating a more immersive experience.

Mise-en-Abyme translates from French as "placed into abyss", and refers to the artistic technique that shows an image containing a smaller copy of itself in a recurring sequence.

A fabulous metaphorical bridging of the Renaissance Period and Contemporary Design through a thoroughly Modern material.