One of the most striking projects of the London Design Festival is taking shape at Trafalgar Square. What Nelson Sees, a collaboration between Paul Cocksedge and Google Arts & Culture, offers visitors the chance to experience the view from the top of Nelson’s Column. For the first time, the perspective that has remained exclusive to Admiral Nelson for centuries is opened to the public.
Born from a long-standing curiosity of the designer, the project seeks to answer a question that seems nearly impossible from the perspective of Londoners: What does Nelson see from up there? The large-scale installation is a freestanding structure composed of intersecting tubes. These telescopic pipes invite visitors to explore the city’s skyline from above. Yet the experience goes beyond the present. Visitors can travel back in time to see London’s streets in the early twentieth century—complete with horse-drawn carriages, gas lamps, and period clothing—before fast-forwarding to confront possible future scenarios: streets adapted to rising temperatures, urban fabrics with increased local food production, and pedestrianized zones.
Dynamic sequences created with Google’s AI-powered cinematic tool, Veo, bring to life London’s ever-evolving yet enduring energy. Blending memories of the past, the complexity of the present, and possibilities for the future into a single line of sight, What Nelson Sees presents the city not just as a landscape but as a story flowing through time.
In Cocksedge’s words, the project takes a column standing for nearly two centuries and transforms it into a thought experiment opening onto the next two hundred years. What Nelson Sees is a study in perspective that connects history with the future, reimagining how we observe, remember, and envision London.
📍 Nelson’s Column, Trafalgar Square, London
📅 September 13–16, 18, 2025
