Looking Back at Installations and Exhibitions of Melbourne Design Week 2024

Melbourne Design Week (MDW), Australia's largest international design celebration, has reached its eighth year this year. This year the event will be held from 23 May to 2 June 2024. It is a place for designers, educators, business people, and communities to gather, share ideas, exhibit, and sell their works. Designers use their skills to reimagine incompatible systems, drive positive change and offer innovative solutions to the increasingly pressing global world challenges. Each year consists of three pillars. This year, the three pillars are ecology, ethics, and energy. Melbourne Design Week 2024 is the time to look together at the world we might create through design.

This edition of Melbourne Design Week brings together more than 300 exhibitions, displays, symposiums, and talks with locations spread across the city of Melbourne and the Victoria State region with the theme Design the World You Want. Here are five installations and exhibitions that are the highlights of this year's Melbourne Design Week:

100 Circles, by Revival Projects

100 Circles on Melbourne Design Week 2024 (cr: Tim Carrafa)

Based on the presentation of the Revival Projects material consultant, these 100 wooden urns are made from large Cypress Macrocarpa trees. These trees were obtained through rescue from the Box Hill Cemetery in Melbourne because the location of their growth is close to the graves, which makes it unsafe. No glue or mechanical installation is used to make these urns. Each urn is inserted with a Golden Wattle seed, which is Australia's national tree; this is intended so that new trees can grow from the urn, which will later be buried to rot completely along with the cremation ashes inside. Each urn is given half a cup of activated charcoal, which helps neutralize the pH levels of the cremation ashes.

Call-out, by Do Works

Call-out on Melbourne Design Week 2024 (cr: Pier Carthew)

Design studio Do Works presents a collection of seven pieces of furniture from architecture studios across Australia in this group exhibition. The exhibition is set in a historic building within the former Union Bank in Prahran, Melbourne, designed by architect Walter Richmond Butler in 1918. It provides a space for architects to reflect on their own research practices through furniture to test new ideas, forms and materials, particularly as architects are involved in a smaller proportion of new builds than ever. Nuud Studio’s intentionally deformed lampshade requires the user to stand and function, Five Mile Radius’ bench made from decommissioned telegraph poles and concrete salvaged from Brisbane construction sites, Simulaa’s coffee table with USB-power-hub and reading lamp, and a table with a surface powered entirely by solar panels.

Abyssicide: Garments for drowning in, by Sruli Recht and RMIT Architecture Tectonic Formation Lab

Abyssicide on Melbourne Design Week 2024 (cr: Sruli Recht)

The Abyssicide installation is showcased with three hanging sculptures that grow from the water of the water media with the help of computational design and robotic fabrication. Calcium and carbonate molecules are attached to the objects using techniques to manipulate electrified seawater combined with negatively charged surfaces. The technique used in this process is a biomimetic technique that takes inspiration from the way corals form their skeletons which take an actual growth period of over a year. Designer Sruli Recht said that imitating the way corals build their skeleton structures actually led him to find a way to transform arctic seawater into solid objects.

Material Matters 02, by BETA by STH BNK and Atelier

Material Matters 02 on Melbourne Design Week 2024 (cr: Material Matters 02)

Showcasing innovative and sustainable materials with bio-based resources and including recycled materials that further advance the advancement in materials science. Among them are Bitsa Block produced in Australia which uses processed industrial waste by Cubic Products in collaboration with a local land treatment facility that embeds ash content in the processed waste to reduce toxic waste soil. Nordgröna's Reindeer Moss panel materials grow naturally and can be picked directly in Scandinavia. These materials have sound absorption properties and act as a moisture indicator.

The Beauty and Persistence of Metal, by Tait

The Beauty and Persistence of Metal on Melbourne Design Week 2024 (cr: Tait)

Australian outdoor furniture company Tait showcased its use of recycled aluminum at the exhibition, along with the launch of the cycle chair and bar stool designed by Adam Goodrum. The manufacturing process uses a metal tube bending machine specially imported from Japan. In addition, various forms of aluminum products during the recycling process raise awareness of the importance of reusing materials and circularity in design.