El Salón
This Clerkenwell Design Week, Disegno will partner with Interiors from Spain to create El Salón, an installation of contemporary Spanish design, curated and designed by Tomás Alonso Studio.
Installed within the Chapter Hall of the Museum of the Order of St John, El Salón is a display of contemporary Spanish interior design and industrial production. Woven into the historic fabric of the museum, the display is intended to show the quality, breadth and depth of contemporary Spanish design.
The installation has been designed by Tomás Alonso, the Galician founder of London-based studio Tomás Alonso Design. “In Spanish, ‘el salón’ refers to a large room within a house – a flexible space for social gatherings and entertaining,” says Alonso. “For Clerkenwell Design Week, we have adopted this typology.”
El Salón will take place within the Chapter Hall of the museum, a Neo-Gothic room created by Victorian architect John Oldrid Scott that has never previously been used during Clerkenwell Design Week. Within this space, Alonso has designed a series of display units to exhibit new products from leading Spanish design brands – APE Grupo, a·emotional light, BPM Lighting, Huguet, Ideatec, Joquer, RS Barcelona, Sanycces and Sellex – running the gamut from furniture to lighting, bathroom to surface solutions.
Alonso’s display units are calm and discreet, and intended to interact sympathetically with Oldrid Scott’s architecture. Their engineering is concealed within bolts of worsted Focus upholstery fabric, manufactured by Gabriel, which have been draped over the structures to provide display spaces for the exhibiting brands. The overall design of the installation has been created to limit the use of material, and to allow for easy dismantling and reuse of the separate elements at the end of the display’s lifespan.
“Chapter Hall is, in essence, the living room or salón of the Museum of the Order of St John,” Alonso explains. “It’s the hub of a building where interactions take place. We thought it would be interesting to push that idea.” In this spirit, El Salón is conceived of as a space in which Spanish design can reach out to a broad audience throughout Clerkenwell Design Week.
The project has been commissioned by ICEX Interiors from Spain, as a showcase for Spanish manufacturing, materials and design. In Alonso’s installation, this contemporary design is placed in direct dialogue with the grandeur and history of the Museum of the Order of St John,parts of which date from the 16th century. This interplay between old and new generates a complexity and richness that is in keeping with the multifaceted nature of Spanish design today.
To explore the project further, Disegno will host a conversation in the space between Alonso and the journal’s editor-in-chief Oli Stratford on Wednesday 20 May from 6pm. Over a half-hour discussion, to be followed by drinks, the pair will discuss topics ranging from Alonso’s treatment of the historic Order of St John’s building to his reflections on Spanish design’s global reputation, offering a chance to join a 21st-century salon in full flow.
El Salón is on view from 19-21 May 2026.
Address:
The Museum of the Order of St John St John’s Gate
St John’s Lane, Clerkenwell
London, EC1M 4DA
Opening hours:
Tuesday 19 May: 10:00 - 18:00
Wednesday 20 May: 10:00 - 21:00
Thursday 21 May: 10:00 - 17:00
Talk:
Wednesday 20 May
Drinks from 18:00
Talk at 18:30
Networking from 19:00