Nadine Jarvis, Cermaic Urn. Courtesy Design Museum

Design Mart, at the Design Museum near Tower Bridge, until January 7 2007, is an annual showcase displaying the latest trends in contemporary design. The show, part of London Design Week, actively encourages young innovators in the U.K. to develop their artistic talent.

The latest design trends, according to curator Libby Sellers, are anti-decorative with sharp edges. Sellers also senses a linear, Spartan and industrial direction in design which can be even "sinister, dark, surreal and subversive."

Perhaps this is not so surprising, because young designers today are, according to Sellers, "emotionally expressive."

Viable - Gala Wright - Meking Light. Courtesy Design Museum

Having surveyed designers and their exhibits both nationally and internationally, Sellers talks of environmental, political and religious upheavals around them: "The larger issues of danger, natural disaster and climatic change reflect the concerns these designers have."

"And they are not shying away from these realities around them." According to Sellers, who says young designers today are using new technologies to: "imbue their designs with greater complexity and meaning."

Among designers participating in Design Mart 2006 are Viable, a London-based collective of lighting and product designers; the design partnership &made whose Climatised Objects address issues of world climate change and natural disaster, and Max Lamb whose design process draws on the physical landscape of his native Cornwall.

Max Lamb, Pewter Stool. Courtesy Design Museum

Product designer Nadine Jarvis exhibits her poetic cremation urns and bird feeders and Peter Marigold has installed temporary shelving solutions - Make/Shift and Prop.

Philip Worthington, working with sophisticated light projection and computer technology, offers visitors interactive and surreal "living" Shadow Monsters, while Tim Simpson unveils his Natural Deselection project that plays on notions of Darwinian selection in the plant world.

During the exhibition, five designers or teams from the 2005 and 2006 exhibitions will be chosen to each receive a £10,000 bursary donated by Esmée Fairbairn Foundation. The bursaries are intended to help the young designers to make the most of their talents by nurturing long term careers in design.

Design Mart, supported by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, will tour throughout the country after its closing date.