Circular Design and the Architecture of Listening at Clerkenwell Design Week’s 15th Edition
As Clerkenwell Design Week (CDW) prepares to mark its 15th anniversary across EC1 this May, the festival is sharpening its focus on two salient themes: sustainability and sound.
Across Clerkenwell’s venues, streets and green spaces, Design Interventions, the festival’s curated series of large-scale installations, will challenge designers and visitors alike to reconsider how we build, consume, celebrate and experience the spaces around us.
Sustainability: Championing Circularity
From recycled structures to circular product design, CDW 2026 puts environmental responsibility at the heart of its programming. One of the festival’s most striking Design Interventions, The Canary Clock Tower (pictured above) by George King Architects, is a tall sculptural landmark inspired by Clerkenwell’s historic tradition of clockmaking.
Just as a clock makes time visible, this tower makes air quality visible by displaying real-time pollution data through analogue dials crafted from recycled plastic offcuts supplied by Smile Materials. The structure itself embodies circularity: a lightweight frame of reclaimed scaffolding, a tactile timber base, and a fully recyclable outer skin.
At the top of the tower, a caged canary weathervane turns with the wind — a quiet nod to the canary in the coal mine, and a call to consider the air we breathe every day. After the festival, George King Architects will explore relocating the piece to a permanent public setting so its message can endure, with all plastic components returned to Smile Materials for full recycling.
Reddie’s furniture crafted from reclaimed teak
French designer Alexane Quenderff continues the theme of circularity with his five BinSight Benches, which are made entirely from waste materials considered too difficult to recycle. Each bench is fitted with a QR code linking to an interactive quiz that challenges visitors to identify the waste materials used, turning a functional object into an education in circular thinking. Showrooms across Clerkenwell reflect this trend with new launches throughout the festival.
Progressive Australian/Indonesian furniture brand Reddie launches its first European showroom in EC1, unveiling its collection of made-to-order chairs, desks, shelving and sofas crafted from reclaimed Indonesian teak salvaged from old railways and houses.
Swedish flooring brand Bolon introduces Back2Bolon, a take-back initiative that makes its flooring and rugs fully circular. Products installed without permanent adhesive can be returned to Bolon’s recycling plant, where materials are transformed into new floors and rugs, closing the loop from design to rebirth and significantly reducing CO₂ emissions compared to virgin production.
Edmund Bell’s recycled blackout fabric
At Commercial Interiors on the Green, Edmund Bell presents Maverick, a recycled blackout fabric designed for hospitality, workplace and public sector interiors. Manufactured from recycled yarns, it delivers reliable light exclusion, flame retardancy and a contemporary textured finish, proving that sustainability and specification performance are no longer in conflict.
Sound: Architecture Through Listening
Recreatura is a dynamic artwork crafted from sound, memory and community
Alongside sustainability, CDW 2026 explores the theme of sound, from immersive community installations to award-winning acoustic workplace solutions.
Design Intervention Recreatura is an immersive, sound-led installation that invites visitors to reimagine architecture through listening. Using a binaural experience, they explore two historic sites in Clerkenwell through the voices, memories and soundscapes of local residents, revealing the textures and stories embedded in the neighbourhood. After listening, visitors respond by drawing on ceramic tiles—an important material in Clerkenwell’s architectural heritage—and placing them within a cube installation in Charterhouse Square. The tiles gradually form a collective structure, transforming shared sounds and memories into an evolving architectural artwork.
Recreatura
At Commercial Design In the Park, German-Polish acoustic booth manufacturer BOX17 makes its debut at CDW with its new, award-winning Cube 1 Stand. Conceived to bring biophilic warmth to the modern workplace, its interior is lined with premium Italian wool felt, creating a calming and tactile environment.
Outside the entrance to Old Sessions House, The BAUX Floating Pavilion will demonstrate how acoustic design can shape both architecture and how we experience spaces by showcasing the Swedish brand’s new X-FELT Floating collection.
As part of the Clerkenwell Design Awards, Design Milk supported by the American Hardwood Export Council (AHEC), invites UK design students and recent graduates to design a distinctive award object in American cherry, celebrating the timber’s natural warmth and character. Showrooms and exhibitors across EC1 will be launching new lighting, furniture, fabrics and more throughout the three days of the festival, proving its status as one of the world’s premier platforms for design.
Clerkenwell Design Week 2026 takes place across EC1, London, from 19 – 21 May.