Melbourne Design Week 2021 satellite program revealed

This March, Australia’s leading international design event – Melbourne Design Week (26 March – 05 April) – will present its largest satellite program to date, with more than 300 events taking place across Melbourne and greater Victoria. Complementing the main program of international speakers, industry events and public programs held at both the NGV and online, the satellite program will comprise 11 days of exhibitions, talks, films, tours and workshops across Victoria that celebrate the best of local, national and international design.

Programmed around the theme ‘Design the World You Want’, highlights from the satellite program include a series of events by A New Normal, which advocate for the need and opportunity to create self-sufficient cities; Home-Made at MPavilion, an exhibition of key marketdriven alternative housing models; Crafts, Crossovers and Collaborations by Jam Factory, which presents new works from the Adelaide based design incubator; and a series of events celebrating the work of acclaimed Australian architect Robin Boyd.

Danny Pearson MP, Minister for Creative Industries, Victorian Government, said: ‘Melbourne Design Week puts a spotlight on design – and the powerful role it plays in our lives. This program showcases the many seen and unseen impacts of design, and how it can shape a stronger, more sustainable world. I applaud the ingenuity of our local design community and encourage you to explore this diverse program of events.’

Tony Ellwood AM, Director of National Gallery of Victoria, said: ‘Design has an important and urgent role to play in improving all facets of life and society – and especially in 2021. The openaccess, state-wide satellite program is an exciting and expansive thread of Melbourne Design Week, offering design lovers and industry alike the opportunity to engage with designers, studios and collectives at the vanguard of contemporary practice.’

Florian Seidler, Managing Director Mercedes-Benz Cars & CEO Mercedes-Benz Australia/Pacific said ‘Mercedes-Benz is proud to be a major partner of Melbourne Design Week in 2021. This year’s diverse and comprehensive program of events presents a wonderful opportunity to explore important design conversations and celebrate local design talent. Partnering on Melbourne Design Week represents our shared values with the NGV of excellence in design, creativity and innovation.’

Ewan McEoin, NGV Senior Curator of Contemporary Design and Architecture says, ‘For 2021 the MDW Satellite program is led by ideas that critically explore the ways in which designers are able to shape broad areas of society, ecology and culture. The MDW Satellite Program seeks to support Australia’s design sector to communicate the relevance and impact of design, including critical thinking and the professional capability of the design sector to shape our future.’

In a call for expressions of interest in late 2020, designers, galleries, educators, innovators, retailers and industry were invited to consider how the design community can work together to create a better, healthier future.

Says Timothy Moore, Melbourne Design Week Satellite Program curator: ‘A critical role of design is to imagine and create alternative worlds with inventions, products, services, environments, materials and processes that respond to current issues and improve quality of life. In 2021 we’ve asked the design community to ‘design the world they want’, and the breadth and depth of response has been remarkable, particularly given Melbourne was in lockdown for much of last year.’

Throughout the 11-day program, participants of varied disciplines will welcome the design community and general public alike to come together to share ideas, experience new work and consider how design can be used as a force for good.

‘We invited industry to submit ideas in response to the three thematic pillars,” adds Moore. “They include ‘Care’ – the need for a more empathetic design process that considers the emotional needs of others, ‘Community’ – celebrating collaboration across disciplines, disseminating knowledge and embracing new cultures, and ‘Climate’ – examining how designers can mediate the effects of climate change and its impact on conflict and socioeconomic inequality.’

An initiative of the Victorian Government and delivered by the National Gallery of Victoria, the inaugural Melbourne Design Week was launched in 2017.

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Melbourne Design Week 2021 satellite program highlights:

• Home Made: Reinventing How We Live in Melbourne by Andy Fergus, Alexis Kalagas, Katherine Sundermann and Lisa Gerstman – is an exhibition that surveys housing innovation in Melbourne, including projects by Nightingale Housing, Assemble, Property Collectives, CoDev, Tripple, and the Third Way. Together, these models suggest a more optimistic and inclusive vision of urban living.
• Crafts, Crossovers and Collaborations by JamFactory is an exhibition of nine selected artists and designers including Kristel Britcher and Andrew Carvolth who celebrate materiality and process to tell the stories of human connection and collaboration, made possible through the unique networks of JamFactory in Adelaide.
• Designwork 05: Cordon Salon presented by Sophie Gannon Gallery is a solo exhibition of ‘puddle mirrors’ by Melbourne based design studio Cordon Salon. Expanding on the studio’s previous experiments with traditional silvering methods, this body of work is inspired by aura photography and Kate Mitchell’s ‘All Auras Touch’.
• Greenhouse by Joost Bakker – Imagine solving the world’s biggest problem’s by simply changing the way we live. Greenhouse by Joost Bakker is attempting just that with a self-sustaining, zero-waste, productive house that demonstrates the potential of our homes to provide shelter, produce food and generate energy. For two months chefs Matt Stone and Jo Barrett will live in the house ‘Future Food System’ and attempt to live solely off the food and resources produced by it.
• A New Normal is a project led by Finding Infinity that challenges Melbourne to become an entirely self-sufficient city, which will be explored through a series of installations and talks including The City After Oil presented by Grimshaw with Greenaway Architects and Greenshoot Consulting incorporating a live demonstration of electrifying a vehicle to showcase the potential for converting all transport infrastructure to electric, Net Zero Architecture presented by Kennedy Nolan speculates on net zero architecture and the existing technologies that can make this happen, Wasted Waste presented by WOWOWA and 6 Degrees, an exhibition examining the opportunity to convert organic waste into gas and fertiliser through anaerobic digestion, Water Unlimited presented by Mark Jacques and Ross Harding, creates an installation that normalises the treatment of wastewater to a drinkable standard in Melbourne, Cultural Battery Banks presented by Hassell, an installation highlighting the need and opportunity to synergise our transportation systems with our energy storage systems, The City After Natural Gas presented by Clare Cousins Architects, an installation examining the impact of gas as a health and environmental hazard and its role in reduced social welfare, The Valley of Sun presented by HA Architects construct a solar powered greenhouse proposing the La Trobe Valley post coal as Australia’s leading renewable energy and agricultural hub, Electric Dreams presented by Foolscap, create installations that inspires people to enjoy and want a better interstate train systems that are fast and electric, and Creating Space with Solar by John Wardle Architects, the construction of a solar pavilion on a Melbourne city rooftop as a place for gathering and a place for dialogue. Dreamer explores the end of landfill through an installation while Edition Office explores the circularity of materials through an installation. Fender Katsalidis construct an installation exploring the possibility of energy efficiency retrofits of all buildings across greater Melbourne. NMBW speculates on the future of suburbia in relation to energy, transport, waste and stormwater.
• The Total Environment: Rethinking Our Approach to Housing A Nation presented by IBA Melbourne and Melbourne School of Design is an exhibition that offers an insightful analysis on the state of housing in Victoria, incorporating current research on historical migration patterns, changes in demography, legislation, planning and construction, and their impact on housing typology.
• Broached Recall presented by Broached Commissions is a collection of furniture pieces crafted by extracting precious timbers from cheap antiques that are undesirable or no longer considered fashionable – a comment on the design industry’s enormous contribution to the economics of extraction and flagrant consumerism.
• Encompassing People & Place presented by RMIT School of Architecture & Urban Design Kerstin Thompson, one of Melbourne’s leading architects, presents her public and community-focused projects, including the award-winning Broadmeadows Town Hall, and the upcoming Jewish Holocaust Centre. As part of this program, Thames & Hudson will launch ‘Kerstin Thompson Architects: Encompassing People & Place’ – the first book in a series entitled: ‘EDITIONS: Australian Architecture Monographs’ celebrating the work of RMIT alumni in the fields of architecture and design.
• Cultivated: Creating a Circular Economy for Authentic Furniture and Lighting presented by Cult Design is a panel discussion to posit a re-think of how we design our systems, services, materials, products and supply chains to establish a more circular economy that will create jobs while reducing waste and cutting pollution.
• Leading Australian architect Robin Boyd will be celebrated in a series of events including Fresh Eyes: Reimagining Robin Boyd’s Walsh Street, a photographic exhibition by leading and emerging Melbourne based photographers that re-interprets Boyd’s iconic Melbourne home, a 1960s inspired Robin Boyd Slide Night presenting a series of films produced by the Robin Boyd Foundation and hosted by Phillip Goad, Peter Maddison and Denise Whitehouse, and The Empathetic Mr. Robin Boyd: Mid- Century Design and Practices of Care, a talk presented by Peter Raisbeck MSD, Dr. Christine Phillips (RMIT), Dr. Karen Burns MSD and RBF, examining Boyd’s role as a futurist and a tastemaker whose design work ranged from houses to exhibitions and urbanism.
• Form From by Studio Flek will feature a series of bar stools made from the by-product of beer production, reintroducing the waste back into the space that created it. Working with Balter Brewing on the Gold Coast, spent hops and beer mash are dried out, to be used as a substrate for Mycelium, the root structure of mushrooms.
• After Hours presented by Volker Haug Studio is an exhibition that will explore the theme of collaborative design and its ability to bring ideas and people together. Creatives from varying disciplines will be given a “room” to exhibit their response to ‘the life of an idea’, from concept to creative and the collective minds that form it.
• Designer, Maker, Manufacturer presented by The Good Plate x CLAD Bendigo Pottery is a series of talks, tours and exhibitions celebrating the institute’s 170-year legacy and quiet yet enduring success in Australian manufacturing; a success that is based on innovation, quality, and productivity.
• A Sea at The Table presented by Other Matter and Fluff Corp is an exhibition of an algae-bioplastic dinner setting and a retail store selling bioplastic pieces. In a concurrent series of ‘translucent dinners’ food will be conceptually centered around the sea and transparency, highlighting the urgency for a post-petrochemical world.

Melbourne Design Week runs from 26 March to 05 April 2021. Explore the full program online at designweek.melbourne.

The Melbourne Art Book Fair is an annual event offering a unique platform that brings together a diverse range of art publishers, artists and designers worldwide. Providing vital links with international fairs in New York, London, Tokyo and Paris, the Melbourne Art Book Fair celebrates Melbourne’s status as one of only eleven UNESCO Cities of Literature in the world.

In 2021, the Melbourne Art Book Fair takes on a distributed format, reaching communities in Melbourne and into regional Victoria as part of Melbourne Design Week. Melbourne Art Book Fair will host a broad range of events not only at the NGV, but also at offsite venues such as bookstores, galleries, art spaces and rooftops. The Fair’s online platform features over 100 local and international publishers, which this year will host an online platform for book sales and live streamed events.

Melbourne Art Book Fair runs from 26 to 28 March 2021.