Melbourne Design Week 2024

Melbourne Design Week (MDW) celebrates design in an annual 11-day program of talks, tours, exhibitions, launches, installations, and workshops across Australia’s design capital. The program is driven by ideas through providing a platform for designers, educators, enthusiasts, thinkers, and businesses to come together to share these 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 respond to the 2024 MDW themes ethics, ecology and energy. 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 2023. Over 70,000 people attended the 2023 festival making it Australia’s leading and largest design event.

Melbourne Design Week highlights the capacity for design to transform our environments – each year asking participants to ‘Design the world you want’. Responding to this call-to-action, designers use their skills to drive positive change, reimagine existing systems, and offer innovative solutions to pressing global challenges.

Each year three pillars, which address the opportunities and challenges that designers are presently facing, underscore this call-to-action. In 2024, the Melbourne Design Week pillars are: ecology, ethics and energy.

Ecology: Ecology explores the entangled relationships between beings and things: humans, animals, objects and environmental systems. Ecological design responds to the physical environment and considers its influence.

Ethics: Designers address societal issues to contribute positively to their communities. Ethics aligns design with the values of society by providing and provoking frameworks that guide actions, behaviours and choices.

Energy: Society is transitioning into a new era led by renewables, including solar, hydro- and wind energy alongside human power. How can designers harness new technologies and transform systems to both power and empower through design?

As we look to the future of our city, suburbs and regions – and further to a global community with shared responsibilities – innovative design becomes a key to a better tomorrow. Melbourne Design Week 2024 is the time to look together towards the world we might make through design.

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.

2024 winner – A&A

Australian industrial designer Adam Goodrum and French marquetry artisan Arthur Seigneur are this year’s award recipients. Adam and Arthur (A&A) have been recognised for their outstanding contribution to the Design Week program and the Australian design industry. Adam’s designs for furniture and surface pattern have been skillfully realised with Arthur, who brings masterful expertise in straw marquetry. Working in collaboration since 2017, together they produce contemporary furniture pieces that embody the cultural and historical significance of centuries-old craft techniques, all while maintaining a resolutely contemporary aesthetic. Straw marquetry is a highly specialised technique that appeared in Europe by the 1600s. Using premium-grade rye straw imported from speciality growers in Burgundy, France, Arthur applies thousands of small coloured straw sections to a timber substrate to create the patterned veneer surfaces appearing in A&A’s one-of-a-kind works.

For Melbourne Design Week 2024, A&A have produced their most ambitious work to date, The Kissing Cabinet. On display at Melbourne’s Tolarno Galleries, The Kissing Cabinet illustrates A&A’s ongoing interest in mechanical furniture, made popular in the 1800s. Traditionally, such pieces encompassed cabinets, desks and bookcases, often featuring concealed chambers that merged design, engineering, and craftsmanship. A&A’s cabinet is more than a homage; it unfolds as it turns inside out to reveal a hidden compartment before closing in the form of ‘kissing lips’.

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.

2022 winner – Revival Projects, led by Robbie Neville

Revival Projects was awarded for its exhibition Zero Footprint Repurposing. The building company, led by Robbie Neville, set up one of the world’s first free repurposing hubs during MDW: at the location in Collingwood, the design and construction industry can use the space to store demolished materials while associated developments come to life and repurposing becomes possible. The exhibition in the space for MDW, inspired designers to adopt simple re-use and recycle policies, and aimed to influence legislative change by advocating for a legal framework that obliges developers and designers to handle existing materials responsibly.

2021 winner – A New Normal, curated by Finding Infinity

The exhibition, A New Normal, curated by Finding Infinity, exhibited fifteen ideas by Melbourne’s leading architects and designers to transform Greater Melbourne into a self-sufficient city by 2030.

2020 winner – Georgia Nowak and Eugene Perepletchikov

Georgia Nowak and Eugene Perepletchikov won the inaugural Mercedes Benz Design Week award in 2020 for their work Aurum, which explored their complex relationship with gold through the medium of film. It has since been acquired by the National Gallery of Victoria.

PRESENTED BY

Stylecraft and the NGV announce Marta Figueiredo as the winner of the 2024 Australian Furniture Design Award with a work championing women’s health. The Australian Furniture Design Award – the nation’s most significant furniture and lighting design accolade with a $20,000 prize – has been awarded to Australian-Portuguese architect and multidisciplinary designer Marta Figueiredo.

Founded by Stylecraft and presented in collaboration with the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV), the biennial Award celebrates the most interesting and innovative furniture and lighting design being created in Australia today.

Selected from a shortlist of ambitious new work, Figueiredo’s Chronicles of Resilience cabinet is a personal and vulnerable work that highlights women’s health, with a focus on endometriosis, and is designed as a tangible platform for advocacy to bring attention to the complexities of a chronic illness that affects one in seven women in Australia. The cabinet features three rotating drums, each detailed with tiles decorated in a workshop ran by Figueiredo with a group of women experiencing endometriosis. The cabinet’s facade is segmented into four vertical thematic panels – Challenge, Resilience, Empowerment, and Imagined Future – each carefully designed to represent different complexities and nuances of the stages of the endometriosis journey.

The design infuses the spirit of Figueiredo’s Portuguese heritage and the principles of furniture typologies around the world including the Portuguese and Brazilian Oratorio Domestico (narrative driven cabinets and furnishings) and the Japanese Butsudan (shrine). In addition to the prize of $20,000, Figueiredo will be invited to develop a commercial range or product with Stylecraft, and a two-week residency at the JamFactory in Adelaide. Ewan McEoin, Jury Chair and Senior Curator, Contemporary Art, Design and Architecture at the NGV said: ‘Marta Figueiredo’s Chronicles of Resilience cabinet is a deeply personal and symbolic work that draws attention to women’s health. It is exciting that this year the Australian Furniture Design Award has a winner that is using the medium of furniture as a platform to discuss women’s health. This is an adventurous and courageous piece – and we look forward to seeing it ignite important conversations.’ Anthony Collins , Managing Director, Stylecraft, said: ‘Amidst the challenges encountered by emerging furniture designers breaking into the industry, the Australian Furniture Design Award offers a promising gateway within the Australian design community. AFDA provides a nurturing environment for new talent, presenting an invaluable opportunity to gain visibility and support in the industry.’

The 2024 recipient was selected by a jury of industry leaders comprising Ewan McEoin, Senior Curator, Contemporary Art, Design and Architecture at the NGV (Chair); Tony Russell Brand Director at Stylecraft, Melbourne; Anne-Claire Petre, Founder Anaca Studio, Melbourne; Hamish Guthrie co-director Hecker Guthrie, Melbourne; and Elliat Rich, Alice Springs-based designer and previous AFDA winner.

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