"We want the words 'Made in Britain,' 'Created in Britain,' 'Designed in Britain,' and 'Invented in Britain' to drive our nation forward," proclaimed chancellor George Osborne in a recent budget statement. The London Design Festival, which opens this Saturday, is clearly in keeping with the government's ambitions.

For nine days, London will turn into a design capital almost rivaling Milan. More than 300 events gather under the fair's umbrella. With twelve new commissions, the Victoria & Albert Museum is one of the key centers, but projects are to be found all over the city, from Shoreditch to Pimlico, Brompton to Clerkenwell.

The London Design Fair prides itself on its daring commissioning policy. It often results in large-scale pieces, that, festival director Ben Evans explained to ARTINFO, "become the visual reference for the festival that year."

For the first time, the fair has had access to a grand staircase in a normally closed part of St Paul's Cathedral. Architect John Pawson was commissioned to design a piece which would respond to Sir Christopher Wren's "desire that each of his buildings should include a scientific element," claims the press material. Pawson has chosen to play with the dizzying height of space, creating a metal and crystal hemisphere reflected in a curved mirror positioned at the top of the tower.

Other spectacular commissions include a 36-foot-diameter spiral of timber — red oak, to be precise — swirling around the V&A's entrance on Cromwell Road. A piece of technical bravado, and the fruit of a collaboration between AL_A and Arup's engineers, the "Timber Wave" is the first instance in which wood of this kind has been used on such a monumental scale.

At the foot of the London Eye, David Chipperfield Architects are currently working with engineers and glass specialists on a large construction integrating a new material, "SEFAR Architecture Vision fabric," that allows glass panels to be both reflective and see-through.

"In the U.K., we've got a very sophisticated design public," said Evans. The "Textile Field" by Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec is sure to be a hit with younger audiences. Working in collaboration with the textile company Kvadrat, the French duo have carpeted one of the V&A's galleries with a soft and colorful cloth. "It's an opportunity to create an environment for viewing art which has never been done before", said Erwan Bourroullec, perhaps forgetting equivalent design experiments by the likes of the Campana Brothers.

The London Design Fair isn't a trade fair, but it plays host to several commercial shows, including 100% Design, Decorex — which is focused on interior design — and Tent London, which concentrates on craft. "If buying is what you want to do, that's here too," said Evans. "I think a lot of the projects are selling shows of one sort or another. Some very directly, some more indirectly. But you could spend five pounds ($8) or you could spend half a million pounds ($791,000)."

"With a £60 billion ($95.1 billion) creative industries sector that employs over 2 million people and produces nearly 6 percent of GDP," said Sir John Sorrell, the fair's chairman, "the government has identified our creative industries sector as crucial to growth. We all know design is the engine that drives the creative industries, so this year the London Design Festival will promote design not only as absolutely central to society and to culture, but also to the economy, to growth and the future." The event has benefited from a "strategic relationship" with the mayor's office since its inception in 2003.

"When we started," Evans continued, musing on the London Design Fair’s success, "there were four or five cities with design showcases. There are now more than 80 of them. I would like to think that we are at the top of the tree."