For three decades, Es Devlin has made spaces behave differently. Theatre stages become landscapes, architecture becomes sculpture, books become kinetic structures, and light, sound and language become materials in their own right. Her work moves fluidly between art, design, performance and public space, resisting the boundaries that usually keep those disciplines apart.

Now, for the first time in Europe, Devlin is turning that expansive practice inward.

Es Devlin: Other Worlds, on view at London’s Design Museum from 2 October 2026 to 4 April 2027, offers an unusually intimate view of one of Britain’s most internationally recognised artists and designers. Developed in close collaboration with Devlin, the exhibition brings together artworks, installations, films, models, drawings, archival material and personal objects spanning 30 years of work across sculpture, stage design, music, language, architecture and large-scale public installations.

But this is not simply a retrospective. Devlin has effectively moved her studio — and much of her archive — into the museum, transforming the exhibition into an immersive journey through the ways her ideas are formed, tested and eventually translated into experiences encountered by millions.

Devlin describes the project simply: “I am moving my studio and practically my entire 30-year archive into the Design Museum for this show.” She calls it an “immense privilege” to share her working process with visitors and to create a large-scale library installation inside a museum for the first time.

Studio

Visitors begin their journey in Devlin’s world inside a replica of her South London studio. Shelves are filled with her books, objects and maquettes, while her desk is covered with drawings, tools and paints. A projection-mapped film narrated by Devlin brings the room to life before visitors move into the wider exhibition, following projects that began in this studio and grew into some of her most ambitious works.

A 50-Year Archive — Parts I and II

Spanning the length of the gallery walls, A 50-Year Archive — Parts I and II brings together early sketches, paintings, collages, diaries and prints that Devlin produced at school, university and art college and continued to make throughout her practice.

The archive demonstrates Devlin’s enduring love of drawing and reveals how projects that eventually become monumental sculptures, theatrical environments or public installations often begin with something considerably smaller: a line on paper.

A 30-Year Desk

At the centre of the exhibition’s archival narrative is A 30-Year Desk, a newly conceived installation that transforms documentation into an artwork in its own right.

A series of concentric circular desks holds hundreds of archival objects, including concept drawings, photographs, personal objects and ephemera, many of which have never previously been exhibited publicly. More than 30 intricate models and maquette-scale recreations reveal projects at different stages of Devlin’s design process.

The models include works that subsequently became major public sculptures, stage designs and choral installations, several of which have never before been displayed in Britain.

Among the projects represented are her set design for The Lehman Trilogy in 2018, Forest of Us, presented in Miami in 2021, her work for the London 2012 Olympic Games Closing Ceremony, the 2022 Super Bowl halftime show, and kinetic stage sculptures created for concert tours by some of the world’s most celebrated musicians.

Seen collectively, the material allows visitors to trace the evolution of Devlin’s practice and the recurring ideas connecting seemingly disparate commissions.

Come Home Again, Mirrored

One of Devlin’s celebrated installations returns to London in a transformed form.

First presented outside Tate Modern in September 2022, Come Home Again originally took the form of a cross-section of the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral, its architectural silhouette illuminated with cut-out drawings of endangered moths, birds, beetles, wildflowers, fish and fungi.

Commissioned by Cartier and created with guidance from the London Wildlife Trust, the work connected one of London’s most recognisable architectural landmarks with the fragile ecosystems surrounding it.

For the Design Museum, Come Home Again, Mirrored has been reimagined as a new constellation incorporating a mirrored ceiling. The transformation reflects Devlin’s ongoing interest in creating environments whose atmosphere and spatial relationships remain fluid rather than fixed.

The work also exemplifies a characteristic tension within her practice: the ability to make a large-scale public installation feel simultaneously architectural and intimate, spectacular and contemplative.

An Infinite Library

The exhibition’s spectacular final room is also its conceptual heart. An Infinite Library, a new kinetic sculpture commissioned by the Design Museum, brings together more than 2,000 books that have informed Devlin’s worldview.

Eight metres wide and triangular in form, the bookshelf rotates on a circular mirror, transforming a familiar architectural object into a moving, reflective structure. The books are arranged by colour, many of them well-thumbed volumes taken directly from Devlin’s own studio shelves, including Chaos by James Gleick, The Spell of the Sensuous by David Abram, Beloved by Toni Morrison and Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood.

These are not simply books chosen to populate an installation. Each has personal significance for Devlin and has helped shape the intellectual and imaginative landscape from which her work has emerged. The sculpture evokes Umberto Eco’s description of a library as a “compass of the mind”, while suggesting the ability of books to transport us into other worlds and into ways of seeing that are not our own.

Visitors experience the library through projections and a soundscape featuring Devlin’s voice reading selected passages aloud. Text, light, sound, movement and architecture converge in a work that encapsulates many of the recurring materials of her practice.

Many of the books have been provided by Penguin Random House UK in support of the National Year of Reading. At the close of the exhibition, they will be donated to local schools and charities, extending the work’s journey beyond the museum.

An Infinite Library is the fourth in Devlin’s series of sculptural libraries, following Library of Light at Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan, Library of Us on Faena Beach in Miami and Library of the Four Winds at Castle Howard in Yorkshire. It is the first of the series to be displayed inside a museum.

At the Height of Her Practice

The Design Museum exhibition also arrives at a particularly triumphant moment in Devlin’s career. In September 2026, she brought her extraordinary vision to Homo Faber 2026: An Island of Light in Venice, creating one of the city’s most striking cultural experiences of the year. At the Fondazione Giorgio Cini, she transformed the historic complex into an immersive celebration of craftsmanship, bringing together more than 500 artisans from over 70 countries and more than 700 objects across 15 installations.

Devlin’s achievement was not simply to create a spectacular setting for exceptional craft, but to put the makers themselves at its heart. Her own installations became unforgettable encounters: in A Full Moon Rising, vessels and moon jars appeared to rise from the waters of the former Gandini swimming pool, while A Great Turning transformed the Palladian Cloister through water, light and a vast kinetic mirror. Together, they gave craftsmanship an extraordinary stage, placing the skill, imagination and human hand behind each object at the centre of the experience.

Click to see the full feature on Homo Faber 2026.

Thirty Years, Seen from Within

Across Other Worlds, Devlin’s career emerges as an expansive body of work spanning theatre, sculpture, architecture, music, language and public space. From early drawings and personal archives to Olympic ceremonies, concert stages and monumental installations, the exhibition brings three decades of ideas into one immersive landscape.

Tim Marlow, Director and CEO of the Design Museum, describes Devlin’s practice as “design in an expanded field” — her “remarkable boundary-blurring work across art, activism, poetry, sculpture, music and architecture,” he says, embodying this approach.

Other Worlds is more than a retrospective; it is an invitation to step inside Devlin’s imagination. Spanning art, design, architecture, music and collective experience, it brings the full breadth of her vision together under one roof. See it at the Design Museum in London from 2 October 2026 to 4 April 2027 — and experience Es Devlin’s worlds for yourself.

Cover Image: Portrait of Es Devlin at the Design Museum, 2026. David Parry/ Design Museum