The designer behind the closing ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics and the Super Bowl halftime show is now moving her entire studio into a museum. Es Devlin: Other Worlds opens at the Design Museum in London on October 2, 2026, running through April 4, 2027. It’s her first European retrospective after thirty years of work.
The studio as the first exhibit
Visitors don’t walk straight into the exhibition. First, they pass through a replica of Devlin’s own studio in south London, the same shelves, the same books, maquettes, and a desk covered in sketches and paint. The space comes alive with a projected film, narrated by Devlin herself, before the doors open scenographically into a mirrored room.
Devlin told the Design Museum: “I am moving my studio and practically my entire 30-year archive into the Design Museum for this show. It’s an immense privilege to have this opportunity to share my working process and practice with visitors.”
Cubes for Jay-Z, eyes for Adele
Devlin is best known globally for something that, at first glance, has little to do with museums, shaping the visual identity of contemporary pop and hip-hop culture. She designed the iconic giant cube structures for Jay-Z and Kanye West’s Watch the Throne tour (2011), still cited today as a benchmark for modern rap stage design. Her work also includes the massive projection mapping of Adele’s eyes for her 2016 world tour, alongside stage environments for Beyoncé, The Weeknd, U2, and Lady Gaga.
That line peaked in 2022, when she designed the set for the Super Bowl Halftime Show, turning one of the most-watched sporting events in the world into a cultural portrait of Compton’s musical history.
Theater and literature as the foundation
Before stadiums, Devlin studied English Literature at Bristol University, and that foundation still runs through her work. Her Tony Award-winning design for Sam Mendes’ The Lehman Trilogy used a rotating, glass-walled office as a visual metaphor for the cyclical, transparent nature of Western capitalism. In works like Library of Us (Miami Art Week) or her 250-book commission at Castle Howard, she builds massive, kinetic book sculptures, actual literary works that shaped her, layered with text and multilingual voiceover.
In 2018, she installed Please Feed the Lions in Trafalgar Square, a fluorescent red lion sculpture embedded with a digital screen that generated collective poetry from public input, a reference to the history of public speech and protest.
Theater and literature as the foundation
Before stadiums, Devlin studied English Literature at Bristol University, and that foundation still runs through her work. Her Tony Award-winning design for Sam Mendes’ The Lehman Trilogy used a rotating, glass-walled office as a visual metaphor for the cyclical, transparent nature of Western capitalism. In works like Library of Us (Miami Art Week) or her 250-book commission at Castle Howard, she builds massive, kinetic book sculptures, actual literary works that shaped her, layered with text and multilingual voiceover.
In 2018, she installed Please Feed the Lions in Trafalgar Square, a fluorescent red lion sculpture embedded with a digital screen that generated collective poetry from public input, a reference to the history of public speech and protest.
Theater and literature as the foundation
Before stadiums, Devlin studied English Literature at Bristol University, and that foundation still runs through her work. Her Tony Award-winning design for Sam Mendes’ The Lehman Trilogy used a rotating, glass-walled office as a visual metaphor for the cyclical, transparent nature of Western capitalism. In works like Library of Us (Miami Art Week) or her 250-book commission at Castle Howard, she builds massive, kinetic book sculptures, actual literary works that shaped her, layered with text and multilingual voiceover.
In 2018, she installed Please Feed the Lions in Trafalgar Square, a fluorescent red lion sculpture embedded with a digital screen that generated collective poetry from public input, a reference to the history of public speech and protest.
Theater and literature as the foundation
Before stadiums, Devlin studied English Literature at Bristol University, and that foundation still runs through her work. Her Tony Award-winning design for Sam Mendes’ The Lehman Trilogy used a rotating, glass-walled office as a visual metaphor for the cyclical, transparent nature of Western capitalism. In works like Library of Us (Miami Art Week) or her 250-book commission at Castle Howard, she builds massive, kinetic book sculptures, actual literary works that shaped her, layered with text and multilingual voiceover.
In 2018, she installed Please Feed the Lions in Trafalgar Square, a fluorescent red lion sculpture embedded with a digital screen that generated collective poetry from public input, a reference to the history of public speech and protest.
Theater and literature as the foundation
Before stadiums, Devlin studied English Literature at Bristol University, and that foundation still runs through her work. Her Tony Award-winning design for Sam Mendes’ The Lehman Trilogy used a rotating, glass-walled office as a visual metaphor for the cyclical, transparent nature of Western capitalism. In works like Library of Us (Miami Art Week) or her 250-book commission at Castle Howard, she builds massive, kinetic book sculptures, actual literary works that shaped her, layered with text and multilingual voiceover.
In 2018, she installed Please Feed the Lions in Trafalgar Square, a fluorescent red lion sculpture embedded with a digital screen that generated collective poetry from public input, a reference to the history of public speech and protest.
enice, fall 2026
This year, Devlin served as artistic director of the Homo Faber biennial on the Venetian island of San Giorgio Maggiore, curating an exhibition of hundreds of handcrafted objects. The project works as a cultural counter-protest against rising algorithmic sameness, putting the human hand and craft back at the center.
An interesting coincidence: in that same city, around the same time, the Venice Film Festival premiered From Inside Out, a documentary about Peter Zumthor’s architecture directed by Wim Wenders. So while Devlin was defending craft against digital uniformity on one side of Venice, a film was screening on the other side about an architect who does something strikingly similar, building spaces made to the measure of the human hand. The same Zumthor whose David Geffen Galleries now tands at LACMA.
Animals that came home
A similar ecological undercurrent runs through Come Home Again, first shown in the Tate Modern garden in 2022. Made in collaboration with Cartier and with guidance from the London Wildlife Trust, it’s an illuminated cross-section of the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral, featuring 240 species, mammals, insects, fish, birds, all found in London. It forces an urban audience to confront the names and sounds of vanishing species. For the Design Museum, it returns redisplayed, in a new constellation.
Fun fact: Devlin holds the London Design Medal (2017), multiple Olivier, Tony, and Emmy awards, and was appointed CBE for services to design.
A building that started as a pavilion
Like LACMA, the Design Museum occupies a building with its own architectural history. It was originally the Commonwealth Institute, an iconic structure with a parabolic roof from the 1960s. In 2016, it was converted by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas and his studio OMA, together with Allies and Morrison. The interior was designed by John Pawson, until then known more for minimalist private houses than major public institutions. Devlin is placing her studio and thirty-year archive inside a building that underwent its own transformation, from a forgotten pavilion into one of Europe’s most striking design museums.
A museum that dissolves boundaries between disciplines
Tim Marlow, Director and CEO of the Design Museum, describes Devlin’s work as the embodiment of “enlightened design thinking.” That’s not an accidental phrase, the Design Museum has long positioned itself around exhibitions that dissolve boundaries between disciplines, and Devlin’s practice across sculpture, stage design, music, language, and light fits that profile almost perfectly.
The exhibition was curated by Johanna Agerman Ross and Danielle Thom with Margherita Dosi Delfini, in close collaboration with Devlin and her studio. It’s supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies, a longtime partner of both Devlin and the museum, and the digital guide will be available exclusively on Bloomberg Connects.
Published alongside the exhibition is A Concise Atlas of Es Devlin from Thames & Hudson, a new edition of 2023’s An Atlas of Es Devlin.
Practically speaking
Es Devlin: Other Worlds runs from October 2, 2026 to April 4, 2027 at the Design Museum, 224-238 Kensington High St, London W8 6AG. Tickets are on sale now.
Sources: Design Museum, Wallpaper*, The New York Times, The Hollywood Reporter, Dezeen — Design Museum / OMA
