Childhood ReCollections: Memory in Design at Roca London Gallery will include six modern-day "cabinets of curiosities" created by architects Zaha Hadid, Kengo Kuma, Daniel Libeskind, and Denise Scott Brown, plus Spanish design duo Nieto Sobejano, and hat designer Philip Treacy.

The "multisensory" cabinets aim to record and recollect designers' early memories -- bringing together photographs, text, objects, materials, scent, film, music and sketches -- and contribute to visitors' understanding of designs they have since produced.

Exhibition curator Clare Farrow has been keen to uncover influences that may fly under the usual radar. She says designers are often asked whose work inspired them as students, but that childhood memories can influence by "less direct" means. "Memories can be consciously retained as part of a creative identity, or triggered by an image, sound or scent, or slowly uncovered in a sequence of layers, like materials stored inside a box," she says. ... The designers recall childhood inspiration, ranging from Daniel Libeskind's mother's geometric underwear designs in early 1950s Poland to a furniture studio in Beirut that inspired a 7-year-old Zaha Hadid. Treacy vividly describes his fascination with wedding gowns and chicken feathers, while Kengo Kuma found solace and excitement in disused Second World War bomb shelters.