Our Melbourne Design Week 2021 top picks

Melbourne Design Week runs from 26 March to 5 April 2021. This year’s festival has been curated using the three thematic pillars: Care, Community and Climate. We’ve rounded up a selection of events with a sustainable focus that will be worth checking out.

A New Normal led by Ross Harding, Principal of Finding Infinity

A New Normal is a project challenging Melbourne to become an entirely self-sufficient city, which will be explored through a series of installations and programs by some of Melbourne’s most renowned architects and designers. The events will take place on the rooftop at 130 Little Collins Street, Melbourne from Friday March 26 – Saturday April 3.

 A Sea At The Table presented by Other Matter and Fluffcorp

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 centred around the sea and transparency, highlighting the urgency for a post-petrochemical world.

A World We Don’t Want presented by Friends & Associates

A World We Don’t Want presents thirteen ideas on a world we don’t want by leading Australian creatives, to speculate on a future we do want. green magazine is also hosting a discussion with six creators from the exhibition – book here.

Broached Recall presented by Broached Commissions and Elton Group

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.

Small presented by Coco Flip

Plyroom and Coco Flip host an evening of conversation and community to explore what it means to be intentionally ‘small’. The event brings together a panel of designers and thought leaders each with a unique perspective on this topic, share personal experiences and explore alternatives to the growth treadmill many businesses find themselves on.

By-Product 2021 presented by E Tu x Ulla

How can open-source philosophies accelerate a shift towards a circular economy in the design industry? This is the provocation of By-Product 2021, an exhibition where leading Australian designers create new work from waste identified from their practice accompanied by documentation of this process.

Form From presented by Studio Flek + Other Matter + Grounded Practice

An exhibition that features a series of bar stools made from the by-product of beer production, reintroducing the waste back into the space that created it.

The Joost Bakker Keynote: Design the World You Want

Imagine a building that grows food. Now imagine millions of buildings that grow food. futurefoodsystem – Joost Bakker’s living eco-experiment currently at Fed Square – shows that our urban environment can be fertile ground. A unique In Conversation event with Joost Bakker and Jo Barrett.

Shared-Value Cities

Shared-Value Cities examines the need for a renewal of our approach to critical infrastructure in our growing cities. How do we design the cities we want, combining the cultural infrastructure with transport nodes, place and production-related, carbon-positive and even regenerative communities? How do we conceive the smart learning environments and the next generation of blended working and learning space. And importantly, how do we design to shape and care for the lives of urban citizens as they develop and flourish in the future creative city?

Explore the full program online at designweek.melbourne.