Our Picks - Melbourne Design Week 2021
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Over eleven days, Melbourne Design Week will present emerging and established designers to address the theme “design the world you want.”
In 2021, Melbourne Design Week explores the theme ‘design the world you want’ where designers demonstrate how they can collaborate to create a better and healthier future for the planet. Designers will respond to this provocation through three pillars: Care, Community and Climate.
Events under the Care thematic reflect the desire for design processes that consider the emotional needs of others, including other species; Community celebrates collaboration across disciplines, disseminating knowledge and embracing new cultures; and Climate examines the ways in which designers can mediate the effects of climate change, including the necessary shift to a zero-carbon future.
To celebrate the upcoming festival of ideas, the Local Peoples team have outlined their program highlights to help you navigate the wide selection of talks, tours, workshops, exhibitions and launches across the state.
A World We Don’t Want
Sometimes to find out what we want, we look to the opposite to understand what we don’t want. 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.
Andy Webb, our resident designer, can’t wait to see this unique concept come to life.
“It seems like an interesting way to present what is really important work. Plus there are some cool people involved.”
And he’s right, there are cool people involved. Contributors include but are not limited to Alterfact, Andrew Carvolth, Flack Studio, Foolscap Studio and Liam Fleming.
Breuer / Isokon Plus
Isokon Plus unveils two previously unseen dining tables designed in 1937 by Marcel Breuer, the acclaimed Bauhaus architect and furniture designer, but never realised until now. The London based furniture maker was founded, as Isokon, in 1929 by Jack Prichard to make modernist furniture.
Anibou together with Isokon Plus present the tables for the first time in Australia with an installation at Anibou Melbourne.
reFrame: The Seven Grandfathers Teaching as an Indigenous Design Process
In this workshop the Seven Grandfathers Teachings, will be presented as an Indigenous design process participants can apply to and reflect on for their own projects. The Seven Grandfathers Teachings as a design process are iterative and non-linear, they have relationality between each other even though the holistic process can take designers to step one to seven.
For Ede Strong, Digital Product Owner, this workshop is an important exercise in extending our current understanding of design.
“As more and more values that originate in Indigenous culture start to come to the fore, this workshop, covering the Seven Grandfathers Teachings, looks like the event to help you push your conception of design and process.”
This 2-hour Indigenous co-design workshop scaffolds how design frames and reframes a situation to support Indigenous knowledge systems and support the work of imagining new tomorrows and today such as decolonising and Indigenising design.
Past Futures: Soylent Green (1973) + Green Renaissance Conversation
In about 60 years’ time, the world will run out of quality topsoil, the non-renewable resource we currently rely on to grow 95 percent of our food. So how will we feed ourselves? It’s a question Local Peoples’ founder Giuseppe Demaio believes will be pertinent for envisioning a more sustainable future.
Moderated by Dr Ollie Cotsaftis, this Past Futures panel features David Holmgren, environmental designer and co-originator of the permaculture concept; University of Melbourne Associate Professor Alex Johnson, a researcher in the fields of plant nutrition and bio-fortification; and RMIT University Dr Pirjo Haikola, a designer and a researcher working on regenerative marine design projects, and whose current work Urchin Corals is exhibited at the NGV Triennial.
Designing with(in) the mess
How can we create a more inclusive landscape for graphic design and architectural practice?
Introduced by Dr Neal Haslem and moderated by Dr Fayen d’Evie, this panel discussion explores the research and practices of four different designers (Nina Gibbes, Dennis Grauel, Dr Jane Connory and Issa el Assaad) who make space for this important shift towards a design world that is pluralistic, inclusive and diverse. Our very own designer Liv Godfrey is looking forward to engaging with the conversation.
“I’m keen to hear from these four different designers especially about their thoughts on diversity and inclusion in the design landscape of Australia. I’m particularly interested to hear the discussion around women in the design industry.”
futurefoodsystem by Joost Bakker
Imagine solving the world’s biggest problem by simply changing the way we live. futurefoodsystem is attempting just that.
Joost Bakker’s long-awaited structure is now complete and you can see it for yourself smack bang in the middle of Fed Square’s River Terrace, complete with aquaponics, solar power, micro-farms, a charcoal tank and rooftop garden.
The sheer ambition of the project is what has Ede excited, “this is a radical project, pushing zero-waste and the idea of self-sufficiency to the limit… and it’s in Fed Square!”
A complex project in a convenient location, be sure to check it out!
