Melbourne Design Week 2018

Melbourne has built a proud reputation as a city of remarkable design and architecture. As Victorians, design is in our DNA – it’s a way of life. It enables us to extend our capabilities and create exciting solutions to problems that can save time, change minds, improve lives – perhaps even save them.

Melbourne Design Week’s eleven-day program of events and exhibitions will celebrate the diversity and impact of design, while giving local Victorian designers the exposure they deserve. This year’s event will consider how design affects our people, environment, services, culture and economy – and its role as a catalyst for change.

In a world of advanced technology, globalisation, digitalisation and environmental change, our expectations and values are constantly being challenged and redefined.

Design will continue to help us navigate and respond to these issues. That’s why the Victorian Government is investing in strengthening our design industry. Melbourne Design Week is part of that investment and we are very proud to join with the NGV to connect Victorians with the best our industry has to offer.

Martin Foley
Minister for Creative Industries

Together with the Victorian Government and a dedicated network of supporters and presenting partners, the NGV embraces our role to create opportunities for broad audiences to experience contemporary design.

Design increasingly touches nearly every aspect of our lives. It shapes our devices, homes, services and cities. It defines how we live, work, learn, spend and connect. It affects the ways we behave and frames the ways we experience the world.

As we are entering an unprecedented period of urbanisation, digitisation, social and ecological transformation, the influence and potential of design accelerates. Is it accelerating in the right directions? What is next?

Melbourne Design Week provides an opportunity for Victoria’s design community to come together, to discuss some of these questions. By bringing together people, ideas and experiences over a compelling eleven-day program, we can reach new audiences and examine together the most interesting trajectories of Victorian design and architecture today.

Tony Ellwood
Director, National Gallery of Victoria

Creative Victoria and the NGV launched Melbourne Design Week in 2017 – a major new four-year design initiative conceived as an ambitious and collaborative program that underscores Melbourne’s position as a global design city.

In 2018 Melbourne Design Week looks at the theme Design Effects and delves into the wide reaching nature of design in its broadest sense. From the physical to the creation of experiences, services and identities, it asks: what effect does design have on the environment around us? How is design a catalyst for change?

The 2018 program of exhibitions and events offers diverse perspectives and experiences across a broad range of topics. The common ground is clear – no matter where we work, live or play, life is increasingly shaped by design.

Melbourne Design Week reveals great ideas, innovations, and creative thinking – but it also highlights ways in which design could help us do things better. We hope that you enjoy the program and join the conversation.

Ewan McEoin
Hugh D.T. Williamson Senior Curator of Contemporary Design and Architecture, NGV

In 2016 the Victorian Government announced a major new initiative to support, celebrate and enable Victoria’s design sector. Curated and presented by the NGV in collaboration with Creative Victoria, the Victorian Design Program is a year-long roster of design and architecture focused events and activities culminating in Melbourne Design Week each March.

In 2017 the NGV introduced a new strand to the program – The Victorian Design Challenge – which invites Victorian designers to form multi-disciplinary teams with professionals from other sectors to apply design in targeting a real-world problem. For the inaugural Challenge, the NGV partnered with VicHealth and asked designers to respond to the Challenge question:
‘How might we increase the resilience of today’s young people?’

Announced on 2 June 2018, the team Local Time, led by architectural graduate, Matt Dwyer and mental health and juvenile justice researcher Dr Sanne Oostermeijer, has been named the winner of the Victorian Design Challenge 2018.

Local Time proposed the creation of a new Design Standard to inform the implementation of Residential Diversion Programs for Victoria’s juvenile justice system. Articulating key principles and requirements for a resilience-focused facility design, Dwyer and Oostermeijer’s Design Standard will assist organisations, local councils and architects in the delivery of small-scale, temporary housing for Victoria’s young community.

The Victorian Design Challenge Jury concluded that Dwyer and Oostermeijer best demonstrated how design can be put to work to help vulnerable youth in society. This was achieved by linking the planning and design of a building facility with a resilient-focused service-system for young people which embraces access to mental health services, education, family, mobility and employment options.

Local Time was awarded the prize of $30,000 to help fund further development and prototyping of their design standard.

The shortlisted teams for the Victorian Design Challenge 2018 were:

Local Time
A collaboration between Matt Dwyer and Dr Sanne Oostermeijer. Team Leader: Matt Dwyer, Architectural Graduate (WINNER)

Failure Place
A collaboration between Global South, Ivanhoe Girls Grammar School, The Space Agency and Banyule City Council. Team Leader: Simon McPherson, Architect/Urbanist Global South

Future Peoples
A collaboration between The Future Ensemble & Local Peoples. Team Leader: Guiseppe Damaio, Director Local Peoples

Platform
A collaboration between Matt Calder, Courtney Brown, Olivia Potter, Lauren Garner, Will Muhleisen, Stephen Mintern and Simon Robinson. Team Leader: Matt Calder, Landscape Architecture

From March 16-18 2018 the Melbourne Art Book Fair brings together the most creative emerging and established international and local publishers, artists and writers for a program of ideas, discussions and book launches.

Highlights include Amsterdam-based graphic design studio Experimental Jetset as Melbourne Art Book Fair symposium guests; The New Institute Rotterdam; e-flux, Berlin and Casco Art Institute: Working For The Commons, Utrecht; exploring new narratives for publishing in a special event; and a three-day festival of crosswords, spelling and grammar presented by writing school The Good Copy.

Find out more