![Book Flatlay Cover Front Transparent Trio[1]](https://d31dpzy4bseog7.cloudfront.net/media/2024/06/07080212/Book_Flatlay_Cover_Front_Transparent_Trio1.png)
Melbourne Design Week Returns for 2024
Melbourne Design Week will return for its eighth year from 23 May to 2 June 2024. Offering a local platform celebrating independent design, this year’s program will feature a series of thought-provoking exhibitions, talks, installations and workshops at NGV International, St Kilda Road, Melbourne and other locations throughout Victoria.
Organised by the National Gallery of Victoria and presented by Creative Victoria, the 2024 program delves into the ideas of energy, ethics and ecology to prompt designers to address bigger questions and encourage positive change. “We see it as an ideas-driven festival; we are interested in looking under the bonnet of design and looking at the processes, materials, cultural heritage and understanding the designers themselves,” says Timothy Moore, one of the co-curators and director of Sibling Architecture. “We are really interested in design being a call to action to think about the kind of future we want to have.”
Exploring the theme, ‘Design the world you want’, the festival will feature independent exhibitions by both emerging and established designers, offering a unique opportunity for Australian designers and audiences to engage with the Australian design sector. “It provides a platform for designers who, in the past, would’ve had to pack the truck and go to Milan,” says Timothy. For the fifth year, Mercedes-Benz Australia will present the Annual Melbourne Design Week Award, with the winner announced on the opening night.
This year’s highlights include the Melbourne Art Book Fair and presentations of work by Visnja Brdar, Jessie French, Sruli Recht and Ross Gardam. Nigerian architect Tosin Oshinowo will share insights into her socially responsive approaches to urbanism. There will also be a public symposium that challenges eight leading Australian landscape architects to develop designs that reinvent sites along the Birrarung (Yarra River.) The Melbourne Design Week Film Festival will also present a series of films that unearth the impact of architecture and design and its power to innovate and shape communities, cities and the environment.
Countless exhibitions will focus on the relationship between architecture and sustainability. “Most of them talk about adaptive reuse and the fact that global waste is driven by the built environment,” says Timothy. “They ask how we can reuse and recycle when building cities, because perhaps the cities of the future are already built around us.” Design studio Never Too Small will present Multi-Functional Pet Furniture, which conceptualises furniture that combines pet housing, aesthetics and affordability. In addition, Ella Saddington’s ‘Material Matters’ will consider the longevity and sustainability of materials that surround us. Programs delivered by the City of Melbourne, BAR Studio and Plus Architecture will explore the environmental benefits of adaptive reuse and repurposed buildings.
Considering the growing impact of Melbourne Design Week, the goal for this year’s program is to encourage designers to confront systematic challenges Australia is currently facing in creative and nuanced ways that connect with people’s ways of thinking. “Melbourne Design Week has a huge impact, as we are now seeing a rise of collectable design and independent design in culture in Melbourne and Australia,” says Timothy. Given this shift, this year’s program has evolved into more of a public forum and call to action – a platform where designers and the public alike can connect and explore current issues and ideas.
