Melbourne Design Week 2023: Five Events You Can’t Miss
Melbourne Design Week, 18 – 28 May, Australia’s largest annual international design event returns, presenting innovative and engaging projects that celebrate the diversity and excellence of Australian design and architecture. Now in its seventh year, Melbourne Design Week is a vital platform to profile the breadth of Australian talent, from emerging to established design practitioners.
Presented by Creative Victoria in partnership with the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV), Melbourne Design Week presents exhibitions, talks, films, tours, and workshops across metropolitan Melbourne and regional Victoria.
Led by NGV’s Department of Contemporary Design and Architecture, the Melbourne Design Week program has grown in scope and scale from 100 programs in 2017 to more than 350 in 2022. Over 55,000 people attended the 2022 festival making it Australia’s leading and largest design event.
Here are five events at this year’s Melbourne Design Week that you won’t want to miss:
#1—Design, Unbuild: Autumn Room presented by Monash Architecture | 18 – 28 May
Monash Architecture students will design and construct an ‘Autumn room’ installation in the courtyard at Collingwood Yards utilising the courtyard’s large Plane trees experiencing various states of autumn defoliation as the basis of the temporary structure. The ‘Autumn room’ is a provocation on alternative ways of building and creating semi-permanent spaces in response to season.
#2—Numbulwar pop-up studio and exhibition – a collaboration between Tait, Agency and Numbulwar Numburindi Arts | 18-28 May
An exhibition of woven furniture designs by Numbulwar Numburindi Arts master weavers Joy Wilfred and Rose Wilfred will be on display at Tait’s Fitzroy showroom. The artists have reimagined Tait’s iconic Tidal chair, a design of which references ocean and wave patterns, using discarded ghost fishing nets that wash up on the shores of the remote Numbulwar community.
#3—Versa presented by Charlie White and Tom Fereday
Versa, meaning to be ‘turned’ or ‘changed’ in Latin, is a collaborative series of installations, showcasing a collection of unique furniture and architectural elements tailored to the three spaces of the Meat Market Stables.
Developed through a process independent collaboration, Tom Fereday and Charlie White have sought to create a series of works that explore the turning of end-of-life materials and the challenging of their perceived value.
With a self-imposed constraint to make only one design gesture each per room, works have been conceived as the transformation of a material into an interior element – seat, table, light, roof, wall & floor – and then designed to express a sensory quality – dark, light, soft, warm, sharp and hard.
#4—WASTE DREAM presented by Cult Design in partnership with Mater | 18 – 28 May
An exhibition exploring how different waste streams from industrial production can become new opportunities and materials in the furniture industry. Mater Circular Materials are created using a production process that takes fibrous waste material and plastic and upcycles it into a unique composite material that can be press-moulded to create new furniture – as showcased in the exhibition with designs by Børge Mogensen and Space Copenhagen.
#5—{Whose Bright Idea?} presented by Euroluce | 18 – 27 May
ARUP, Woods Bagot, Euroluce, and Woven Image will create a striking journey of sight, sound and touch with an immersive sensory installation inviting visitors to consider the lifespan of products and materials beyond the immediate timeline of a project.
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