Surface Reflections: Highlights from the 2025 London Design Biennale
Since opening its doors on Thursday, 5th June, the London Design Biennale 2025 has transformed Somerset House into a global platform for international design, cultural dialogue, and creative exchange. Now in its fifth edition, the Biennale continues to showcase the very best in design and innovation, as pavilions from around the world respond to this year’s thought-provoking theme: Surface Reflections.
Samuel Ross
Curated by British designer and artist Samuel Ross, the 2025 Biennale invites audiences to explore “the dynamic interplay between internal experience and external influence.” This year’s installations ask us to look beneath the surface of objects, systems, and spaces to uncover the often-invisible forces that shape our identities, environments, and societies.
Taking over the entirety of Somerset House, from the Embankment Galleries to the iconic Edmond J. Safra Fountain Courtyard, the Biennale presents 35 pavilions created by nations, institutions, and leading creatives. Visitors can expect an immersive journey through soundscapes, performances, sculptural installations, and sensory experiences that interrogate urgent global issues — from cultural memory to ecological responsibility and the future of urban living.
At The Fluxx Magazine, we’ve explored this edition of the Biennale to discover the installations that captivated our imagination. Here, we highlight our favourite contributions from the 2025 London Design Biennale — each one a testament to design’s power to reflect, unite, and reimagine the world around us.
Rachel Botsman: Roots of Trust
Photography: Mark Cocksedge
One of the most quietly powerful installations at this year’s Biennale is Roots of Trust, presented by author and trust expert Rachel Botsman. At a time when digital technology reshapes how we work, communicate, and build relationships, Botsman invites visitors to pause and look to the past.
Her installation reimagines a historical design artefact that transformed working life — a reminder that every system of trust, no matter how technologically advanced, is rooted in human values. Botsman’s contribution offers both a design intervention and a philosophical provocation, asking how we visualise, design, and preserve systems of trust for the future.
Hong Kong Pavilion: Human-Centred Design — Visuospace
In a world increasingly dominated by urbanisation and high-density living, the Hong Kong Pavilion’s Human-Centred Design: Visuospace offers a refreshing, neuroscientific approach to spatial design.
Created by Hee Sun (Sunny) Choi and Ka Ho (Kyle) Yu, the installation explores how spatial structure, movement, depth, and visual perception can be more effectively aligned with human emotional and cognitive responses. By exploring the intersection of design, psychology, and urban planning, the pavilion proposes a more human-focused approach to how we build and inhabit cities.
Through interactive elements and spatial experimentation, the pavilion underscores the Biennale’s call to look beyond surface appearances and design environments that support emotional well-being and collective belonging.
Oman Pavilion: Memory Grid by Haitham Al-Busafi
Memory, legacy, and craft converge in the Oman Pavilion’s Memory Grid, an evocative installation by designer Haitham Al-Busafi. At first glance, visitors encounter familiar forms — vessels crafted from traditional Omani pottery— yet beneath the surface lies a layered meditation on resource preservation and cultural memory.
The installation weaves together metaphors of data, material heritage, and collective history, encouraging audiences to reflect on what societies choose to preserve and what is lost over time. As the boundaries between physical artefacts and digital information blur, Memory Grid serves as a beautiful reminder of the enduring role of craftsmanship in connecting past, present, and future.
Japan Pavilion: Paper Clouds — Materiality in Empty Space
The Japanese Pavilion offers a moment of quiet transcendence with Paper Clouds: Materiality in Empty Space, a collaboration between SEKISUI HOUSE and KUMA LAB.
Inspired by the strength, translucency, and ephemeral beauty of Washi paper, the installation floats cloud-like forms through the gallery, accompanied by music and performance. A recyclable paper dress — ethereal yet structured — adds a fashion dimension to the work, reminding visitors that material innovation often lies in ancient craftsmanship.
By combining architecture, sound, and human movement, the pavilion explores themes of impermanence, nature-inspired design, and the delicate interplay between presence and absence — an interpretation of Surface Reflections that feels both grounded and dreamlike.
Argentina Pavilion: Sur Andina
In Sur Andina, the Argentine Pavilion invites visitors on a sensory journey into the Andean world, where sound, materiality, and ancestral knowledge converge.
This immersive installation uses texture, light, and resonant vibrations to evoke the forces that shape our relationship with nature and cultural memory. As visitors move through the space, they experience the living pulse of the land, where ancient materials and contemporary design blend harmoniously.
In a Biennale rich with conceptual and technological exploration, Sur Andina stands out for its grounding connection to place and tradition — a powerful reflection of how design can honour heritage while offering new interpretations for future generations.
Malta Pavilion: URNA
Few installations capture the Biennale’s invitation to imagine alternative futures as poignantly as the Malta Pavilion’s URNA.
Responding to the legalisation of cremation in Malta in 2019, the installation proposes a new ritual for memorialising human remains. Drawing on the island’s cultural history of columbaria, ossuaries, and wakes, URNA reflects on the evolving role of ceremony in modern life.
Through its thoughtful use of space and symbolism, the pavilion invites contemplation on death, remembrance, and the enduring human need for meaningful rituals — a striking example of how design shapes not only our environments but our deepest cultural expressions.
Design as Reflection and Provocation
Since its inception in 2016, the London Design Biennale has established itself as a leading platform for showcasing the global role of design in fostering dialogue, innovation, and collaboration. Founded by Sir John Sorrell CBE and Ben Evans CBE, the Biennale continues to attract the world’s most ambitious designers, artists, and cultural bodies to the UK capital.
This year, under the artistic direction of Dr. Samuel Ross MBE — celebrated for his boundary-pushing work with A-COLD-WALL* and the Black British Artists Grants Programme — the Biennale embraces its most introspective and globally conscious edition yet.
Across the 35 pavilions, themes of identity, memory, craftsmanship, technology, ecology, and belonging intersect. From the introspective to the political, the installations reflect a world grappling with uncertainty, yet brimming with the creativity and optimism of its designer
As Director Victoria Broackes explains, Surface Reflections offers a timely moment to pause, look beyond appearances, and engage with hopeful, equitable visions for the future.
London Design Biennale 2025: A Must-See for Global Design Enthusiasts
Running until 29th June 2025 at Somerset House, the London Design Biennale remains one of the most exciting and thought-provoking events on the global design calendar. Whether you’re drawn to immersive architecture, cultural storytelling, material experimentation, or speculative design futures, this edition delivers on every level.
For those looking to experience the cutting edge of international design, uncover new ways of thinking, and engage with the creative minds shaping tomorrow’s world, the 2025 London Design Biennale is unmissable.