"Is touching really asking too much?"

Look-but-don't-touch design exhibitions are inherently unfulfilling so it's good that some designers are finding ways to let people properly interact with their work, writes Alice Fisher.

In the 1990s as a student in London, I got a summer job at a famous department store. I was a sales assistant for towels and robes working next to the bathroom furniture department which, true to the shop's reputation for ostentatious luxury, included some incredibly ornate toilets.

One morning, word spread around the staff that someone had – somehow – managed to use a display toilet for its intended purpose. Reactions ranged from outraged disgust to amused respect.

I so often want to climb into the displays of beautiful furniture I'm looking at and settle in

Personally, I was envious – imagine clambering into that sterile room set and settling on the porcelain throne. Even the most prestigious customer wouldn't get away with that.

I'm surprised how often I think about that toilet when visiting design exhibitions these days. Not for any weird reason – the only stool I like to see is one that's handmade, preferably from reclaimed wood – but because I so often want to climb into the displays of beautiful furniture I'm looking at and settle in.

Sadly, at most design festivals that would be as shocking and frowned upon as hopping onto the lav in a department store display.

Looking but not touching or interacting with design is, to my mind, a strange and impotent experience. I spend so much time staring really intently at chairs trying to imagine what they feel like, when what I really want to do is loll in them.

The two things I overuse the most at London Design Festival (LDF) and other such events are my camera phone – obvs – and the surreptitious finger. You know what I mean – the index finger you slide out at hip height to feel the buttery softness of a leather chair arm, or the cool surprise of a marble tabletop, when the publicist and designer are looking the other way.

Just to be clear, I'm not stupid. I understand the financial and creative investment that studios and designers have put into these displays. I know that most of the furniture on show is a prototype or produced at great personal cost to the maker and that letting the clumsy, feckless public loose on these masterpieces is not a good idea.

Many design-week visitors want to experience furniture in a natural way

And yet… wouldn't it be great if there was an idiot-proof version of the furniture you could have a go on?

Cast your mind back over the most discussed or fondly remembered exhibits at recent design weeks and you can see I'm not the only person who feels this way. Paul Cocksedge, Alison Brooks and Waugh Thistleton all made landmark wooden LDF installations in recent years that could be sat on, walked through or even climbed up.

I'm so pleased that the AHEC exhibition Wood for the Trees, which debuted at Copenhagen's 3 Days of Design (3DD) in June, will also appear at LDF this week. The show includes beautiful rocking wooden benches by Benchmark, which are such a great place to sit.

Also at 3DD this year was an outsized conversation pit. This version of the 1950s favourite – in beautiful lemon linen – was a collaboration between furniture brand Vipp and Spanish architecture studio Mesura. Big enough to hold 60 people, visitors were encouraged to slip off their shoes and climb inside using swimming pool-style ladders. Most design critics opted to bounce like toddlers at soft play rather than hold a meaningful conversation, which made the experience even more delightful.

Metamorphosis in Motion by architect Lina Ghotmeh at this year's Milan design week gave a similar thrill. Watching people explore Ghotmeh's magenta maze, which filled the courtyard at the Palazzo Litta, was a pleasure.

The trend for staging shows in apartments rather than sterile showrooms also reflects how many design-week visitors want to experience furniture in a natural way. While design shop Artemest is probably the OG brand for turning fabulous apartments into even-more-fabulous fantasy exhibition spaces during Milan, I think French vintage dealer Antoine Billore's Loreto apartment for perfume house L'Artisan Parfumeur this year was the one in which I really wanted to sit down and pretend it was mine.

"I'd be filmed by a load of strangers while making coffee in the morning," she said. "It was pretty extreme."

British designer Charlotte Taylor's breakout show was Home from Home at 3DD 2025 (pictured). She not only curated this exhibition of work by 40 furniture designers held in an apartment at Noura Residency on Sankt Peders Stræde, but also lived in the space during the design festival.

Recently, Taylor told me that, although the idea was to get away from the "untouchable tableau" of the typical design show, she hadn't expected visitors to get quite so comfortable, quite so quickly in her personal space. "It became a performative piece, to the extent that I'd be filmed by a load of strangers while making coffee in the morning," she said. "It was pretty extreme."

She should have held a lottery that gave visitors the opportunity to apply to spend the night there themselves. I can think of few things that design fans would like more.

All I would like designers to do is think of any way it's possible for visitors to engage with their beautiful creations beyond the look-but-don't-touch of a standard design fair. Using a toilet absolutely crosses the line, but is sitting down, or even touching, really asking too much?

Alice Fisher is a lifestyle journalist based in London. She was previously lifestyle editor at The Observer, and has also written for The Guardian and the Financial Times, among others.

The photo is by Elizabeth Heltoft Arnby.

This article was originally written as part of our Dezeen Dispatch magazine for LDF 2026. Read an online version of the magazine here.

LDF 2026 is taking place at various locations around the city from 12 to 20 September. To see what's on, visit Dezeen Events Guide.

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