June is a whopper for soaking up design-led inspiration across the capital.
From the London Festival of Architecture and the Design Biennale to the three-day London Gallery Weekend, you’ll want to plot out an itinerary and choose your comfiest shoes for days packed with joy-seeking.
Around town
Expect tours, performances and installations on the theme of “voices” as the London Festival of Architecture (londonfestivalofarchitecture.org) returns throughout the month.
Highlights include an architectural treasure hunt around Battersea Power Station (open every day, batterseapowerstation.co.uk), and The New Naturals exhibition at the Another Country showroom in Marylebone (June 2 to June 30, closed Sundays, free, anothercountry.com), which explores how natural materials can be used to build and enhance our homes.
At Somerset House, the London Design Biennale (June 5 to 29, tickets from £22, somersethouse.org.uk) celebrates its fifth edition with artistic director Samuel Ross setting the theme of Surface Reflections.
There will be more than 40 pavilions from around the world, ranging from fungi-based building blocks to heritage-inspired Uzbek craft pieces.
And don’t leave town this weekend — more than 125 galleries are staging new exhibitions complemented by special events as part of the London Gallery Weekend (June 6 to 8, londongalleryweekend.art).
From Derek Jarman at Amanda Wilkinson to Harley Weir at Hannah Barry Gallery, it’s free to attend, though you’ll need to book a place for the “in conversations”.
Go west
Blooming King’s Road window displays are all that’s left of the Chelsea Flower Show until next year, but the interiors equivalent, WOW!house, is only just getting started at Design Centre Chelsea Harbour.
Across 22 full-size rooms, designers let their imaginations run riot — with no clients to appease or budgets to manage, this is creativity at its most unrivaled.
Nicola Harding is designing a “jewel box” of a powder room, while Alex Dauley has her sights set on a grown-up media room (June 3 to July 3, tickets £25, dcch.co.uk).
Round off the day with a late-afternoon snoop around the new Serpentine Pavilion (from June 6, serpentinegalleries.org).
Architect Marina Tabassum and her firm have created a wooden sculptural form with a translucent façade that diffuses and dapples light.
Smell the roses
The only time you’ll get to nose around those fancy garden squares is this weekend, as London Open Gardens returns for another year.
Your ticket allows entry to more than 100 spaces, with funds ploughed back into managing the capital’s green spaces (June 6 to 8, £24, londongardenstrust.org).
A must is Middle Temple Gardens, where there’s a secret vegetable and cutting garden to discover behind Temple Church.
Over in Highgate, OmVed Gardens (omvedgardens.com) is now open to the public again, with new spaces including the Kitchen, complete with rooftop garden.
Book club
Spanning properties from Bali to Hampstead, The Reimagined Home (£35, Penguin) by stylist and journalist Nicole Gray is a beautiful exploration of how to embrace sustainable design.
Across 16 projects, homeowners share practical advice from every stage of the creative journey, making for a beautiful keepsake which hopes to inspire renovators to think a little more mindfully.
A Vocabulary of Colour is a love letter to Biarritz by interior designer Marta de la Rica (€90, martadelarica.es). Chronicling the profound impact the French city has had on her, it blends poetic prose with vivid imagery.
Retail therapy
H&M’s exciting collaborations extend to homewares, too; its 23-piece collection with Palm Heights, the beachfront boutique hotel on Grand Cayman Island, founded and designed by the New York-based creative director Gabriella Khalil, launches on June 12 (hm.com).
Perfect for bringing the holiday vibes home, choose from cotton beach towels, sculptural vases and glassware, far left.
After something a little more storied? Log on to auctioneer Dreweatts for The Attic Sale, a landmark clear-out of Powderham Castle from the Earl of Devon.
Chock-full of brown furniture at surprisingly reasonable reserve prices, there’s also a fun collection of porcelain and miscellania. (June 3, dreweatts.com).
