Designs galore; ART & DESIGN

Students are bursting out all over with novel ideas.

Design doesn't stop with outrageous Royal Ascot hats. Nor, indeed, is it concerned solely with fashion. Everything we see or use, from frying pans and corkscrews to buildings, battleships and bricks, has first to be designed. Our universities and colleges are alive with young artists, all graduating this summer, and all bursting with new ideas. They'll get a chance to show them off next month when one of Europe's biggest shop windows displays the work of more than 4,000 of the UK's most talented art and design students, representing 130 institutions. The exhibition will fill Islington's enormous Business Design Centre.

So much will be on show the organisers have split the event into two distinct parts - from 8 to 11 July, it will be newly-designed furniture, ceramics and jewellery, glassware, metal and silver work, product and industrial design, applied arts, model making and design management. Then from 15-18 July, it will be the turn of textiles and fashion, graphic design, photography, packaging and advertising, as well as design management.

So much is on display. If only we could all use the flywheel-assisted scooter to whizz around the exhibition. Alas, only an attractive working prototype of this futuristic vehicle will be on view. But future commuters might well want one. Its horizontally mounted flywheel under the footplate stores energy, produced by the rider's scooting action, and applied by a clutch lever to accelerate from a standing start. The designers of this fascinating new and economic form of transport, already chosen to appear at this year's Motor Show, are Dan Mohacek, John Robertson, Lee Bazalgette and James Kynvin - all in their early twenties and industrial design and technology graduates from Loughborough University.

From the robust to something more delicate. London Guildhall University appears to be bursting at the seams with designers of fine jewellery and many of them will be exhibiting their wares at Islington. Heading the long line-up is Julie Lawrence, a multi-talented woman who has already one first-class honours degree under her belt, and is expected to add another. Her first First was in English literature in 1991 from the Polytechnic of North London, just a few months before it became a university. She then worked as marketing director for various publishers before finding her true niche. It was an evening course in jewellery-making that sparked her interest, and in 1997 she enrolled for a full-time BA in silversmithing and jewellery design at the John Cass Department of London Guildhall.

Julie's work has brought her one accolade after another, the latest from the Goldsmiths Company for an aluminium shelf light with green and blue fluorescents, also available in stainless steel and various light colours. Julie's silver necklace encrusted with pearls and her oxidised silver bracelet (both also available in gold) are simply stunning.

Among other fine jewellers to come out of the London Guildhall stable are the Danish-born Mikala Djorup, whose rings, necklaces and bracelets become almost animated when worn, changing with the movement of the wearer; and Kayo Saito, a young Japanese who won his spurs when he graduated from the Musashino Art University, Japan, in 1991 after taking a craft design metal course. London Guildhall recognised his experience, and allowed him to skip the first year of its BA course in silversmithing, jewellery and allied crafts. His long necklaces - he calls them neck pieces - are like fine sculptures, and one can understand the influence he has taken from plants, shells and fossils. He believes that, when not worn around the neck, his creations should be hung on walls, like paintings, to give colour to the "living space".

A slightly more active exhibit will be Darren Gowland's CelluCycle. This 24-year-old industrial design student from the University of Teesside has made what he claims to be a cellulite-busting exercise machine. Its footpedals can be programmed for speed, difficulty and timing, and the CelluCycle has a calorie counter.

Twenty-one-year-old Kemal Dervish - graduating from South Bank University with a BSc in engineering product design - has produced a plant pot that will water itself. Whenever the soil starts getting dry, a sensor sends a signal to a reservoir around the edge of the pot, and thereupon sufficient water is released to keep the plant happy and thriving.

Among other South Bank exhibitors is Densley James, 26, whose heat exchanger will filter out smoke-laden air from pubs and the like, then cool and recycle clean air. And Alex Bassett, 22, will be present with a full-size power jetski equipped with a Wankel engine that lets riders guide themselves with water impulse power.

For something somewhat smaller, there's a clockwork toothbrush which you wind up instead of having to plug in, or to fiddle around with batteries. It is the work of David Aldridge, who was a toolmaker before enrolling with South Bank.

From the University of East London comes Nicola Kennett, 21, a graduate in printed textiles and surface decoration, whose furnishing fabrics and bed linen is certain to make you stop at her stand. She has already received commissions from Medici for greeting card and gift wrapping designs.

Amanda Humphries, 22, who has worked for fashion designer Zandra Rhodes, has produced handbags and fabrics embossed with different materials, including plastic.

And Kristian Demant, 22, will show off her gloriously large repeating floral imagery in furnishing fabrics for curtains and upholstery. Kristian, who also produces beautifully bright gift cards, has already designed the interior of a London club.

How many older people can claim to have done in a lifetime what these youngsters have achieved in the bloom of youth?