Designed by Casson Mann for Design Council as part of the UKinNY festival, the award-winning Great Expectations exhibition opened in Grand Central Station, New York in 2001. Installed in this busy station, Great Expectations was intended to celebrate the innovation of British design in front of an American audience.

Inspired by the banquet scene in Charles Dickens' Great Expectations, the showcase featured a 54m banqueting table laden with over 100 examples of ground-breaking British design - a true feast of design excellence. The interactive exhibition invited visitors to take a seat and, through speakers and screens set into the chairs and table, learn more about the ideas that inspired these creations and the processes involved in bringing them to life.

Exhibits included Marks Barfield Architects' London Eye, Marion Deuchar's repackaging of George Orwell's novels for Penguin Books, Seymour Powell's Bioform bra, Thomas Heatherwick's Plank chair, Marc Newson’s glow in the dark aluminium bike, and Lambie-Nairn's BBC2 brand idents.

Click here for more on this project and the wider history of Design Council.