Melbourne Design Week 2023

Melbourne Design Week (MDW) is an annual 11-day program of talks, tours, exhibitions and workshops that celebrate and interrogate design through its varied disciplines, including: communication design, industrial design, service design, gaming, architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, fashion, craft and functional art. MDW is an opportunity for people within these disciplines — including designers, educators, thinkers and businesses — to come together to share ideas, show and sell new work and consider how design can be used as a force for good in an increasingly complex and precarious world.​​​​​​​

The program is curated into two streams. There is a stream of local and international exhibitions and presentations organised by the National Gallery of Victoria, which includes the Melbourne Art Book Fair and the Melbourne Design Fair. There is also the satellite program of events and exhibitions organised by the design community. The satellite program makes up approximately 90 per cent of the program with events held at ateliers, studios, retail spaces, universities, galleries, gardens and public spaces throughout Melbourne and regional Victoria. Participation in the satellite program is via an expression-of-interest.

MDW is an initiative of the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria and delivered by the NGV. The program is built on the enthusiastic engagement and participation of the design sector and the public. Since 2017 the program has grown in scope and scale from just under 100 programs in 2017 to over 350 in 2022. Over 55,000 people attended the 2022 festival making it Australia’s leading and largest design event. The curation of the program is led by the NGV Department of Contemporary Design and Architecture team.

Since 2021, Melbourne Design Week has celebrated the potential of design to transform our environment – from the inside our homes to the entire planet – with the call-for-action for individuals and organisations to ‘Design the world you want’. This provocation asks designers to think outside the status quo in order to face the multiple challenges that encircle us: loneliness, climate disasters, social inequity, and the cost-of-living. Under this thematic, designers will demonstrate what design can do, what more it can do, and what can it do differently.

Each year, three pillars sit under this call-to-action to address the ever-changing opportunities and challenges that designers face. In 2023, these pillars are transparency, currency and legacy, which ask participants to think over time and scale to design the world they want.

Transparency: With the complex challenges that surround us, the world demands an openness in how designers work in order to involve more people, and things, in problem-solving. This pillar asks designers to unveil their design processes, share knowledge and engage with the agency of others. It also demands that designers be honest and responsible with the materials they use: from its extraction to its afterlife.

Currency: Currency is a medium of exchange that prioritises an economic value. Financial currency constructs the world, but this value is artificial and assumed. There are many other values to consider, such as social, environmental, cultural, natural and political currency. This pillar explores how designers are rewiring systems of exchange to define what is a current value.

Legacy: Design reinvents itself for the market: The search for innovation can be transformational. It’s also an opportunity to give up bad habits. Underpinning every brand, service, product and object is the continuation of a particular value that transcends time. This can be financial or material, but it could also be an ethical position. Designing for legacy ensures that impact of design lasts long after we are gone. What kind of ancestor do you want to be?

The Melbourne Design Week Award presented by Mercedes-Benz is an annual prize awarded for an outstanding contribution to Australia’s largest international design event.

The winner receives peer recognition among the local and international design community, and a cash prize thanks to Major Partner, Mercedes-Benz. The winner is selected from the program that most resonantly responds to the theme of Melbourne Design Week.

2023 winner – Paula Savage

Paula Savage, is a senior Mualgal artist from Moa Island in the Torres Strait renowned for her ability to bring to life the enduring traditional material practices of her cultural heritage. During Melbourne Design Week 2023, Savage presents three extraordinary works at the Melbourne Design Fair on display as part of the FOCUS exhibition, which brings to attention the skills and conceptual prowess of five accomplished Australian female designers. Savage was selected to display works in the FOCUS exhibition through her accomplishment in melding an array of creative practices: weaving, tie-dying, carving and jewellery making.

PRESENTED BY

From creating and making etchings at an Italian-inspired ‘Print Kitchen’, to exploring the role of First Nations design, and examining historical and contemporary publishing practices, the 2023 Melbourne Art Book Fair offers audiences the opportunity to discover some of the world’s best independent publishers, art book makers, authors, galleries and more.

Find out more