Es Devlin: Other Worlds Opens at London’s Design Museum with a 2,000-Book Kinetic Library

London’s Design Museum has opened Es Devlin: Other Worlds, the first European retrospective of the multidisciplinary artist and designer. The exhibition fills the museum’s ground-floor gallery and runs from 2 October 2026 until 4 April 2027, tracing three decades of work through her studio, her archive and the books that shaped her thinking.

According to Wallpaper*, which reviewed the show and worked with Devlin on her guest-edited October issue, the layout follows a deliberate sequence from studio to practice to library, intended as a step-by-step account of how a creative practice develops.

A recreated studio and a 30-year desk

The visit starts in a full reproduction of Devlin’s London workspace, complete with maquettes, books and tools, where a video of the designer introduces the exhibition in her own voice. Doors then open onto a mirrored room holding Come Home Again, an illuminated piece first shown at Tate Modern in 2022 that features her drawings of 240 species found in London, from mammals and birds to insects and fish.

The next space is built around what Devlin calls the 30-year desk, a curved structure created for the show that presents her career at a glance. It draws on 5,000 objects from her personal archive, including 30 revolving models, maquettes and hundreds of sketches. Two wall installations, titled The 50-Year Archive parts I and II, add sketchbooks, drawings and paintings collected over a lifetime of making.

An Infinite Library at the end of the route

Visitors reach the final room through a bright red tunnel, a near-fluorescent colour that recurs throughout Devlin’s work. There, on a mirrored platform, stands her Infinite Library: a colour-coded set of kinetic sculptures carrying more than 2,000 books that have informed her practice and outlook.

Devlin told the magazine that she arranged the exhibition this way after noticing how many young designers and practitioners pass through the museum, many of them looking for hints about how to start or shape their own careers. She said she wanted to leave every trace that led her along the way, so visitors could see how a practice can evolve over 30 years.

For architects and spatial designers, the show offers a rare look at the process behind Devlin’s immersive installations, from early maquettes and sketchbooks to the reading that informs them.