Sydney Design Festival 2016

The Sydney Design Festival 2016 program has been released, featuring over 100 events in venues across Sydney from 2 – 11 September. Make or Break is the theme for this year’s festival and is embodied in the program’s range of exhibitions, talks and workshops.

Since 1996 the Sydney Design Festival has championed leading design practices from Australia and abroad. The festival is led by the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences (MAAS) in collaboration with over 50 museums, galleries, universities, design studios, businesses, and community organisations across greater Sydney and NSW.

“Design impacts our lives in both obvious and undetected ways. Over the history of the festival some of the concepts, trends and models presented have become parts of the everyday while others have disappeared. The events in this year’s festival have a common theme of make or break, which highlights a fundamental step in design; to create something new by reimagining the old.” said festival director, Janson Hews.

A festival highlight, the Out of Hand: Materialising the Digital exhibition will open on 3 September. A collaboration between MAAS and the Museum of Arts and Design, New York (MAD), Out of Hand explores the increasingly important role of digital manufacture in contemporary art, science, design and architecture.

From Iris van Herpen’s Bubble Dress to the world’s first 3D printed jet engine, created by Monash Advanced Manufacturing, the exhibition showcases over 90 artworks and objects materialised using new digital technologies and the world’s best design practices.

Regional NSW arts community The Cad Factory has gathered artists from across the Narrandera region to create Shadow Places. Exploring the impact of design and manufacturing on rural areas and agricultural communities, Shadow Places is a huge artwork combining textiles, agricultural objects, projections and soundscapes. This multimedia installation will loom large in the Powerhouse Museum throughout the festival.

Festival Highlights

The inaugural The Really Goods Line Day will celebrate the award-winning design of The Goods Line in Ultimo with a day of performances, talks and entertainment. Designed by ASPECT Studios and opened in 2015, The Goods Line connects the Powerhouse Museum, University of Technology of Sydney, the ABC and Central Station via a 500 metre pedestrian walk designed and landscaped from disused railway tracks.

Creative kids can put their inventor instincts to work at free Makers and Breakers making workshops at the Powerhouse Museum each weekend of the festival. For more artistically minded kids, Parramatta Clay and Arts Inc is holding weekend clay workshops during the festival.

Handy people can build a bamboo bike in one day that they will ride home with Bamboo Bike Hack at MakerSpace & company. Foodies will unite in awe as Harry+Matt deliver a gastronomic performance in Don’t Play With Your Food. Or you can create an original, edible artwork out of fresh produce in Superlocalstudio’s Plant Planet workshop.

A series of engaging talks will feature presentations from leading design professionals in events that highlight the intersection of design with other industries such as medicine, hospitality, sustainability planning and indigenous art history.

Beginning with a panel of design professionals discussing Visual Culture in a Digital World on the opening night of the festival, other talk highlights include Pecha Kucha: Sink or Swim featuring celebrated Australian artist Ken Done, Colour and Trends Forecast 2017, and Designing Human Experience by General Assembly.

An industry symposium about Interactive Media will bring together design professionals, researchers and educators, presented by UNSW Faculty of Art & Design. A Keynote talk by Microsoft’s Design Guru, Kat Holmes will round out the program. Golden Age Cinema and Bar will present a special screening of Jean-Luc Godard’s cult 1965 dystopian sci-fi film Alphaville.

The full Sydney Design Festival program is available online.