Melbourne Design Week 2024
Australia’s largest annual design festival, Melbourne Design Week, is back for its eighth edition. Over 11 days expect a diverse program of more than 300 talks, tours, exhibitions, installations and workshops – each offering a platform for new and established creatives and an opportunity for the Australian design community to connect.
This year’s theme is “Design the World You Want”. Its focus is energy use, ethics and ecology to promote positive change, reimagine existing systems and offer innovative design solutions to complex global challenges.
A highlight of the 2024 program is a keynote talk from Nigerian architect Tosin Oshinowo, who recently curated the Sharjah Architecture Triennial. She’ll discuss her socially responsive approaches to urbanism and explore how design and architecture can meet cultural and climate needs in the 21st century.
Other highlights include a public symposium tied to the NGV’s upcoming exhibition Reimagining Birrarung: Design Concepts for 2070; the 10th Melbourne Art Book Fair; and a keynote from Dr Christine Checinska (the Victoria and Albert Museum’s senior curator of Africa and diaspora textiles and fashion) to celebrate NGV International’s Africa Fashion exhibition, opening in May. Plus there are presentations of work by New York-based designer Visnja Brdar, founder of experimental design studio Other Matter Jessie French, Icelandic designer and artist Sruli Recht and local designer Ross Gardam.
There’ll also be a fascinating satellite program exploring the relationship between design and death, the return of Melbourne Design Week Film Festival, a presentation on multi-functional pet furniture by design studio Never Too Small, and an installation by First Nations designer Lisa Waup. And perhaps the most unique event: a competition where Melbourne-based landscape architecture studios reimagine an under-development site in the city through cake.
Plus, there will be speculative design exhibitions looking at design solutions for the future, programs that dive into adaptive re-use and repurposed buildings, and plenty more sustainability-focused events.
Events take place in several iconic Melbourne venues, such Melbourne Museum and Collingwood Yards, as well as venues across Bendigo, Ballarat, Geelong and Shepparton.
Broadsheet is a proud media partner of the National Gallery of Victoria.
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