Timber Wave, an installation designed by AL_A and built by Arup outside London's Victoria and Albert Museum.

London likes to think of itself as the creative capital of the world, and for nine days each year it gets its chance to prove it. The London Design Festival has, since 2003, been a showcase for the world’s creative industries, and is presently roaring through the city with myriad events and exhibitions.

There are events everywhere in galleries and studios around the city, but official landmarks are centred around the Victoria and Albert Museum. There architecture firm  AL_A designed and engineering firm Arup built Timber Wave, pictured above, which sits before the museum doors like an arch exploding into a spiral.

It’s too ambitious of a task to attempt to chart a detailed course through the fray, and, I might add, it would be a shame to try.  Part of the festival’s brilliance is making discoveries on your own, though blogs It’s Nice That and Confessions of a Design Geek are covering the festival with sharp eyes and nice images.

Here are some particular 2011 LDF standouts:

Whiteout: The Danish Cabinetmakers Autumn Exhibition: Stark, futuristic prototype chairs in crisp clean white. See them through Sunday, 25 September in Drill Hall Depot at 206 Brompton Road.

Textiles Field by Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec and Kvadrat: A enormous and plush field of upholstered tiles in simple, brilliant colours. See it at The Victoria and Albert Museum in the Raphael Cartoons Gallery through Sept. 25 and check out Kvadrat’s site for a timelapse movie of the installation.

Amu Song’s breathtaking Reddress installation in York Hall, Bethnel Green, catch it before 25 September.

Noma Bar’s clean and negative-space-laden die-cut art. Runs through 30 September at Outline Editions gallery space at 94 Berwick Street, London W1F 0QF.

Highlights from the Lodon Design Festival. Clockwise from upper left: Whiteout, Textiles Field, Reddress and die-cut art from Noma Bar.

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The detailed exterior of Santa Maria della Salute. Courtesy Rob Young under CC.

From 1629 to 1631 Venice was struck by a particularly virulent plague that killed 46,000 Venetians, nearly a third of the city’s population at the time. In response, the Venetian Senate ordered the construction of a church dedicated to the Virgin Mary, long considered a protector of the Republic. The resulting structure, the Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute, is known commonly as the Salute, Italian for health. Every year since on 21 November, city officials have lead a procession over a temporary bridge built over the Grand Canal to the narrow finger of land where the Salute sits. As Christopher Howse writes in the Telegraph, it seems that Venetians, “not conspicuously pious in their daily demeanour, all make a point of a visit.”

Non-locals may want to make a point of visiting the church at other times of the year (or, as Howse recommends, at night after most of the tourists have departed), as the design and interiors are remarkable and worth an extended look. Built on a platform supported by 100,000 wooden piles driven into the heavy clay that sits beneath the shifting Venetian silt, the Salute is an expansive octagonal building with two impressive domes and a pair of bell towers. It’s frequently depicted by artists obsessed by the city’s skyline, John Singer Sergeant and JMW Turner both turned out impressively moody interpretations. It’s an effective choice as symbolic of Venice. Like the city itself, the Salute is impressive and bold, yet somewhat mysterious. Overtly religious but powerful for non-believers too, a great deal of the church’s allure is due to the human ingenuity involved its construction and its social impact, rather than the objects of worship it symbolizes and contains. Howse is right to focus on the procession as an event that yields insight into the city, the monument alone tells you only part of the city’s story; real insight rests with a city’s inhabitants and their relationship with the structures.

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A Francois Fouquet model of the Roman Forum on display at Soane's Museum in London. Courtesy Soane's Museum.

One of the most fascinating museums in London is Sir John Soane’s Museum in Holborn. A current exhibition features a collection of twenty plaster restorations of the great landmarks of ancient Greece, Rome and the Near East by model maker and artist Francois Fouquet. With astonishing detail, the fragile models were produced using a technique now lost to contemporary scholars, reports the New York Times blog In Transit.

Soane’s Museum is worth a quick visit anytime. The former studio and house of neo-classicist architect Sir John Soane, the museum holds a fascinating collection of his models, paintings, drawings and antiquities. Like the current exhibit Soane displayed a reverence for detail, an almost slavish attention to the elegant line. That aesthetic is present in his work in full display at the museum itself and at Pitzhanger Manor and Dulwich Picture Gallery.

Perhaps most famously, Soane’s tomb (designed by the architect himself) at St. Pancras Old Church exhibits a motif that was taken up by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott in the famous standard red telephone box.

The museum is free and open to the public Tuesday through Saturday, 10 am to 5 pm; the first Tuesday of every month until 9 pm. There are no miniatures of telephone boxes.

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The view from on high at Lebua in Bangkok. Courtesy Marooned on Flickr under CC.

Perhaps one of the most enjoyable ways to enjoy an evening in the bustling city of Bangkok is from a perch in the clouds at one of the city’s many marvellous rooftop bars. Among the most chic, as recently highlighted by Condé Nast Traveller, is the Skybar at Lebua, Blue Sky at Sofitel Centara Grand, Long Table at the Column, Three Sixty Lounge at the Millennium Hilton, and Red Sky at the Centara Grand.

For equally sumptuous places to stay there is The Sukhotai, a tranquil respite from the clutter and chaos of the surrounding city. Similarly divine is the Banyan Tree Hotel, which features endless views over the city from its Moon Bar, as well as exceptional spa treatments and traditional Thai opulence. Guests looking for more down to earth luxe will want to head for The Eugenia, a 19th-century manor house turned all-suite boutique hotel.

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Miles of pink sand beaches and azure surf on Harbour Island, Bahamas. Image courtesy Sarah Keleman on Flickr.

Boasting three-and-a-half miles of picturesque pink sand beaches, Harbour Island is consistently voted one of the Bahamas’ best for diving, fishing, swimming, and snorkelling. The island also offers some of the region’s best restaurants, with a casual atmosphere and unforgettable views.

For the perfect Harbour Island escape, we have three lovely and luxurious hotels to recommend. First there is the delightful Coral Sands Hotel, an intimate hideaway perched on a bluff overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. Sister to the Corals Sands is the equally enchanting Pink Sands Resort. A collection of 25 cottages scattered across 20 acres, guests enjoy a real sense of privacy on this tropical island paradise.

Finally, there is The Landing with its hip restaurant and quintessential English style. An historic Bahamanian estate circa 1800, The Landing is remarkably pretence-free despite its serious cachet.

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