Design Canberra 2016
This year’s Design Canberra festival will kick off with a keynote talk by architect Philip Vivian of Bates Smart at the award-winning Vibe Hotel at the Canberra Airport.
Vivian has said the project sought to reflect Canberra’s DNA, resulting in a hotel crafted specifically for its location and context: “We have created a uniquely Canberran destination for travellers to enjoy, one that will attract visitors with its timeless design combining circular and axial geometries to create a distinctive form, derived from both its context and referencing Canberra’s history. These circular geometries allow the building to be read in the round, responding to the site’s multiple approach and vantage points.”
Architecture is a key theme for this year’s Design Canberra festival, which celebrates and promotes Canberra as a global city of design from 27 October 2016 to 25 November 2016. As well as the Philip Vivian keynote talk, the popular AIA bus tours will be held on every weekend of the festival and a new program, Living Rooms, brings together acclaimed Canberra houses, design and craft to create an open home with a difference with works on sale by local makers.
More than 26,000 visitors flocked to the 2015 festival and numbers are anticipated to be larger this year with the event running over a new longer format of four weeks. The festival program presents exhibitions, events, activations and workshops, covering landscape design, architecture, industrial design, graphic design, fashion, jewellery, homewares and more.
Vibe Hotel Canberra Airport is the major accommodation partner for the festival and will host the keynote events and a signature exhibition, Golden Tangerine: Architectural Intentions in Glass by Elizabeth Kelly.
Design Canberra is the major outreach activity for Craft ACT: craft + design centre. The high profile annual festival helps to promote design, develop audiences, forge marketplace connections and raise the profile of Canberra’s thriving design community.
“We are excited to offer this year’s schedule of more than 100+ events in this, our most beautiful, most international and most ambitious festival program yet. Design Canberra is a popular and high profile platform to collaborate across design disciplines and show the best ACT has to offer,” said Rachael Coghlan CEO Craft ACT: Craft and Design Centre, and Artistic Director of Design Canberra 2016.
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