Community, Culture and Climate: What To See and Do at Sydney Design Week 2025

What does a renowned Dutch architectural photographer, a biblical Chinese opera performance, and a cultural centre that evokes ancient sun rituals have in common?

They all feature in the 29th edition of Sydney Design Week, whose program showcases how design evolves in response to local and global realities. “Design isn’t as tied to production as it once was. Its reach is far more expansive,” explains the festival’s creative director and Powerhouse senior curator Keinton Butler.

This year’s theme is “community design”, exploring how design and public spaces allow for collaboration and the interchange of ideas and practices. The program brings together practitioners from around Australia and the world who demonstrate a deep understanding of local knowledge systems.

This community-driven approach is encapsulated by Porous Cities, a panel featuring leading Thai landscape architect Kotchakorn Voraakhom, who has been recognised by the United Nations, Time, the BBC and Bloomberg for her leadership in climate-resilient design and the future of civic space. Her major projects – including a 22,000-square-metre urban rooftop farm at Thammasat University; a bridge park across the Chong Nonsi canal; and Chulalongkorn University Centenary Park, which was designed to mitigate flood risk in the area – ingeniously integrate climate adaptation, water management systems, and public green space in culturally and environmentally responsive designs. Here, Voraakhom appears alongside local experts to discuss how cities can adapt to flooding through collaborative, cross-disciplinary urban design strategies.

Another international guest, the new-generation Beijing architecture studio OPEN, is also deeply mindful of culture, community and nature in its urban design practice. The studio caught Butler’s attention with its manifesto written in poetic verse, and its Sun Tower project – a public building in Shandong province with a stunning semi-outdoor “phenomena space” on the edge of the ocean – stood out for showing how architecture can be shaped by its environment and local history. “It’s a cultural facility that has theatre and exhibition spaces,” Butler says, “but it also has – in their words – ‘space to capture and celebrate natural phenomena’. It’s located at a place where ancient sun worshipping culture in China first emerged.” At Sydney Design Week event Coexistence, founding partners Li Hu and Huang Wenjing will talk about their design philosophy and present part of their Venice Architecture Biennale video installation, Nature Trilogy, which showcases recent OPEN projects.

OPEN collaborator Iwan Baan is also on the design week program; you can hear the Dutch architectural photographer reflect on his work at Shared Spaces. Alongside OPEN and fellow festival guest Francis Kéré, Baan has been commissioned by architects around the world – including Rem Koolhaas, Zaha Hadid and Toyo Ito – to document their projects. His images of OPEN’s Sun Tower demonstrate a preoccupation with the experience of built space, rather than isolated structures that appealed to Butler’s team.

Local community spaces are the focus of Sites of Ritual, a day of tours, performances and workshops in the western Sydney suburb of Bonnyrigg, highlighting how architecture and design can be living expressions of culture and community. It all happens on Bibbys Place, where three vibrant cultural centres sit side by side: Buddist temple Phap Bao Pagoda, the Vietnamese Community Cultural Centre, and Gracepoint Chinese Presbyterian Church.

At the temple, senior venerables will speak on the design principles behind Buddhist stupa and shrines and a communal vegetarian lunch will be served by the Bodhi Tree. While the cultural centre will stage music, dance and theatre performances, plus a workshop on the evolution of Đông Hồ folk paintings, from carved woodblocks to contemporary graphic design. At the church, congregants will stage a biblical Chinese opera performance, as well as a classical calligraphy demonstration.

“These spaces create an opportunity for reflection but also bring people together to help with spiritual guidance, in times of crisis, or [as a reminder that] there’s community support there,” Butler says. “Design is evident in costumes and traditional Chinese calligraphy. Even the serving of food can be seen as a ritualistic practice that is designed.”

Western Sydney is a central focus in this year’s programming, as the Powerhouse prepares to open its massive new Parramatta site, which is set to be NSW’s largest museum. “We’ve been thinking about how cultural institutions can best serve their local communities,” Butler says. The events she and her team have lined up illustrate how cultural facilities can become real community spaces, where people come together to share culture and knowledge.

Of course, it all comes down to design, Butler says. “Design is ever-present and inherent to the human experience.

“[The program] is multidisciplinary. That’s a reflection of how design shapes our spatial environment but also influences our human experiences as well. That’s really the idea that we wanted to interrogate.”

This article is produced by Broadsheet in partnership with Powerhouse. Sydney Design Week runs from September 12–24. Tickets available now.