Melbourne Design Week Reveals Program for 2021 Festival

Melbourne, March 2021 - Melbourne Design Week, Australia’s leading annual international design event, has revealed the full program for its 2021 festival – the largest iteration to date. Presented by Creative Victoria in partnership with the National Gallery of Victoria, and now in its fifth consecutive year, the festival features 11 days of more than 300 exhibitions, talks, films, tours and workshops across Victoria and online exploring the theme ‘design the world you want’.

Encompassing the full breadth of the design sector - from the industry’s most respected designers, emerging practitioners, through to small independent studios - Melbourne Design Week celebrates the diversity of Australian design and architecture and offers both industry professionals and design enthusiasts alike the opportunity to engage with local, national and international practices at the vanguard of design world-wide. These include leading architecture firm Kerstin Thompson Architects; designer, researcher and SCUBA diving instructor Pirjo Haikola; eco-innovator Joost Bakker; globally renowned architectural innovator Alisa Andrasek and more.

The 2021 festival has been curated using the three thematic 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 and accelerate the necessary shift to a zero-carbon future.
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​Traversing both the physical and virtual worlds, the program also comprises an extensive digital offering that will be accessible via a new, specially-designed digital platform, hosted on the Melbourne Design Week website and developed in collaboration with Melbourne studio Mecca Medialight with new brand design by 3-Deep. Audiences from anywhere in the world can access the never-before-seen digital program, including talks, virtual galleries for key satellite exhibitions, photo archives, interviews, podcasts and more.

Danny Pearson MP, Minister for Creative Industries, Victorian Government, said: ‘Melbourne Design Week puts a spotlight on design – and the powerful role it plays in our lives. This program showcases the many seen and unseen impacts of design, and how it can shape a stronger, more sustainable world. I applaud the ingenuity of our local design community and encourage you to explore this diverse program of events.’

Tony Ellwood AM, Director of the National Gallery of Victoria, said: ‘Good design has the potential to change the world – and this important provocation sits at the heart of this year’s Melbourne Design Week program. Melbourne Design Week is a festival of ideas, offering industry and audiences alike the opportunity to reflect on the roles and responsibilities of design in 2021. The NGV is proud to be presenting this important festival on behalf of the Victorian Government and hope that audiences and designers alike take the opportunity to engage with this year’s rich and diverse program.’

Florian Seidler, Managing Director Mercedes-Benz Cars & CEO Mercedes-Benz Australia/Pacific said ‘Mercedes-Benz is proud to be a major partner of Melbourne Design Week in 2021. This year’s diverse and comprehensive program of events presents a wonderful opportunity to explore important design conversations and celebrate local design talent. We're pleased to reward this talent with the return of the Melbourne Design Week Award presented by Mercedes-Benz, a cash prize which will be awarded for outstanding contribution to the program.’

Highlights from the 2021 Melbourne Design Week program include:

A New Normal
​A New Normal is a series of programs, installations and talks by some of Australia’s leading architectural practices, and led by Finding Infinity, that challenges Melbourne to become an entirely self-sufficient city. In The Valley of Sun HA Architects construct a solar powered greenhouse that proposes the La Trobe Valley as Australia’s leading renewable energy and agricultural hub; Electric Dreams, presented by Foolscap, comprises installations that presents the possibilities for high-speed and electric interstate train systems; and exhibition Wasted Waste, presented by WOWOWA and 6 Degrees, examines the opportunity to convert organic waste into gas and fertiliser through anaerobic digestion.
​www.normalise.it
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​Celebrating Robin Boyd
​Leading Australian architect Robin Boyd will be celebrated in a series of events, including Fresh Eyes: Reimagining Robin Boyd's Walsh Street, a photographic exhibition by leading and emerging Melbourne based photographers that re-interprets Boyd’s iconic Melbourne home; a 1960s inspired ‘slide night’ presenting a series of films produced by the Robin Boyd Foundation and hosted by Phillip Goad, Peter Maddison and Denise Whitehouse; The Empathetic Mr. Robin Boyd: Mid-Century Design and Practices of Care, a talk presented by Peter Raisbeck (MSD), Christine Phillips (RMIT) and Karen Burns (MSD) with the Robin Boyd Foundation, examining Boyd’s role as a tastemaker whose design work ranged from houses to exhibitions and urbanism; and a new, richly-illustrated publication, After Australian Ugliness, published by the NGV in collaboration with Monash University and the University of Technology Sydney with the support of the Robin Boyd Foundation, offers a contemporary response to Boyd’s seminal 1960 text The Australian Ugliness.
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​Greenhouse by Joost Bakker
​Imagine solving the world’s biggest problem’s by simply changing the way we live. Greenhouse by Joost Bakker is attempting just that with a self-sustaining, zero-waste, productive house that demonstrates the potential of our homes to provide shelter, produce food and generate energy. For two months chefs Matt Stone and Jo Barrett will live in the house ‘Future Food System’ and attempt to live solely off the food and resources produced by it.

Broached Recall
​Broached Recall presented by Broached Commissions is 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.
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​Form From by Studio Flek
​Form From by Studio Flek will feature a series of bar stools made from the by-product of beer production, reintroducing the waste back into the space that created it. Working with Balter Brewing on the Gold Coast, spent hops and beer mash are dried out, to be used as a substrate for Mycelium, the root structure of mushrooms.

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