During the 2017 London Design Festival (LDF), around 150,000 people a day walked past Villa Walala, Camille Walala’s eye-catching inflatable building blocks that were on display in Broadgate’s Exchange Square. Of course many of those people will have been on their way to work, but then that’s part of the joy of the LDF: design becomes accessible by becoming part of the built environment.

And no one can argue with the hard facts: last year’s festival attracted a record-breaking 450,000 individual visitors from more than 75 countries. Now in its 16th year, the nine-day event does a great job of promoting London as one of the design capitals of the world and, as Mayor Sadiq Khan says, it shows the capital is ‘open to great ideas, innovation and people from all backgrounds’.

It’s certainly a demanding festival, with more than 400 events taking place across London this  year. While Milan’s Salone del Mobile presents mostly finished products, LDF is more about ideas in progress. As such, it’s a showcase for young, up-and-coming designers as well as more established ones, which makes it both exciting and something of a lottery. As in previous years, the LDF is split into so-called ‘design districts’, which run from east to west and north to south: the five 2018 newcomers this year are Fitzrovia, Marylebone, Regent Street/St James’s, Victoria and West Kensington, bringing the total number of districts up to 11.

This year, Broadgate is spelling out its commitment to design in the same interactive, playful way as last year. Walala’s inflatable building blocks have been replaced by Kellenberger-White’s 26 brightly coloured metal chairs, each folded into a different letter of the alphabet. The chairs have been painted different colours, each relating to an existing icon of industrial metalwork, from the international orange used to paint San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge to the cornflower blue of Middlesbrough’s Transporter Bridge.

Meanwhile, at the V&A, the MultiPly installation by Waugh Thistleton Architects in collaboration with the American Hardwood Export Council and Arup dominates the Sackler Courtyard. An interactive modular structure made with 60 cubic metres of American tulipwood, Waugh Thistleton hopes it will  entertain visitors but also encourage them to consider how housing might adapt to climate change, now an inescapable concern for the design industry.

Sometimes, however, the simplest ideas are the best. The London Fountain Company was set up by publisher Charles Asprey and design curator Jane Withers to ‘bring beautiful drinking fountains back to the streets of London’. The pilot drinking fountains, designed by Michael Anastassiades, can be found in the V&A’s John Madejski Garden and in a public space in the Brompton design district. The fountains signal a shift away from single-use plastic bottles and towards a sustainable water-drinking culture that will surely be welcomed by the thousands of LDF visitors trekking across the capital.

Most of the LDF talks have to be booked in advance, but many are free. On 21 September in Clerkenwell Design Quarter, for example, a talk will be held on ‘Smart living: energy and the design of the future home’. There are other glimpses into the future nearby. Zaha Hadid Gallery (101 Goswell Road, London EC1V 7EZ) is offering free tours on 18 and 22 September. There is a presentation of its in-house 3D printing research, which hopefully includes the impressive 3D-printed chairs it showed at Salone del Mobile.

Showcasing up-and-coming and established designers, it’s both exciting and something of a lottery

A few doors down, Knoll (91 Goswell Road) is celebrating its 80th anniversary with both new and iconic designs, ranging from Piero Lissoni’s 2017 Grasshopper collection of tables to a special edition of Antonio Bonet, Juan Kurchan and Jorge Ferrari Hardoy’s 1938 Butterfly Chair.

South of the river in Bankside, the luxury lighting company Innermost (Unit 2.02 2.04, Oxo Tower Wharf, Barge House Street, London SE1 9PH) is displaying its bespoke and customised pieces (they adapt the size, material, colour and configuration of many of their lights) as well as their new array of Kepler LEDs. Designed by the Tyne & Wear design company Cohda, Kepler is named after Johannes Kepler, the German mathematician, astronomer and astrologer who discovered the first supernova. The lightweight cylindrical disc, made out of polycarbonate, steel and microweave fabric, is adjustable but can be locked into place. Effective as a single light, in a group they resemble a very elegant invasion of UFOs.

A must-see exhibit is London’s Design Biennale, which runs until 23 September at Somerset House. And the Design Museum’s Beazley Designs of the Year are on show until 6 January. As London Design Festival director Ben Evans observes, at least once a year, London really is the global centre of design.

London Design Festival runs from 15–23 September. londondesignfestival.com