The National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) has announced the program for Melbourne Design Week 2022, which will run from 17 to 27 March.
The 2022 theme “Design the world you want” is divided into two pillars – civic good and making good – encouraging participants to think beyond the individual and as well as explore the social and environmental impact of design. The program will see exhibitions, talks, films, tours and workshops across the various design fields taking place across the city and parts of regional Victoria, including Castlemaine and Ballarat.
Now in its sixth year, the program has expanded to more than 300 events, from the annual Melbourne Art Book Fair to Open House Melbourne’s Open Nature which will explore the growing movement towards ecologically responsive, “more-than-human” design through a series of experiential and activity-based events.
Landscape Australia rounds up some of the key landscape architecture and design events of this year’s program.
Subject/Object
Thursday 17 March to Sunday 20 March, 12pm–5pm
Opening Saturday 19 March, 3pm–5pm
514 Elizabeth St, Melbourne
Subject/Object asks nine designers to select four objects that have influenced their design approaches and ways of thinking. The collection of objects displayed explores the intersection of everyday living and design practice, and interrogates landscape architecture and design as an ongoing, life-long process. The exhibition harnesses a slower, more reflective lens that, rather than focusing on built outcomes, highlights the personal and philosophical influences that inform design thinking.
Sensory Garden Lab
Friday 18 Mar, 12pm–1pm (online panel talk)
Thursday 24 Mar, 10am–4pm (interactive olfactory installation at MPavilion)
MPavilion
As the demand for urban greening increases in Melbourne, it is becoming increasingly important that data around these spaces are transparently available to the public. Parks improve mental well-being and reduce energy consumption, but what safety and health risks do they pose and what are their financial costs over time? Sensory Garden Lab encourages people to create a custom fragrance based on their perceptions of green spaces juxtaposed against a base formula that draws from current and historical crime and health data. A panel of researchers and industry experts will discuss how interactive design, data journalism and materialisation can encourage reflection and empower community.
Making Future Landscapes Now
Saturday 19 Mar, 12pm–8pm
Capitol Theatre, Melbourne
RMIT University’s ’s landscape architecture program perceives landscape as an ever-evolving network of environmental and cultural forces. The global ecosystem now faces unprecedented challenges of human-induced climate change, colonisation and social and environmental inequalities. This event promotes dialogue between academics, designers, students to interrogate the nature of current and future landscapes and the tools, techniques and technologies that we use to engage them. The day will showcase design research from RMIT Landscape Architecture staff, students and alumni and will explore alternate approaches for encountering and shaping our future world.
Open nature: Hidden histories of the Birrarung – First Peoples knowledge, contemporary actions
Thursday 24 Mar, 5:30 pm–6:45 pm
Gosch’s Paddock, Royal Botanic Gardens
Explore the hidden histories of the Birrarung in this guided tour of the river’s former course. Beginning in Gosch’s Paddock in Melbourne Park, the tour crosses the river into the Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne to explore the water courses that flow through the landscape. Participants will consider the different approaches to water and land management and how we might work toward a healthier swimmable river.
Own it! Exhibition
Thursday 24 Mar, 6:30 pm–8:30 pm
Friday 25 Mar, 10am–4pm
TCL Studio, 385 Drummond St, Carlton
We spend substantial amounts of time in our city’s civic spaces, but do we really have any agency within them? This exhibition that participating artists, students, writers, community groups and designers to unpack the value of community autonomy and emotional investment in public space. The exhibition expresses the intimate stories and relationships of community and landscape through the lenses of disruption, duty and structured agency. Own It! challenges the pervasive and regimented structures that govern the public realm hoping that we can come to realise the full social vibrancy of our civic spaces.
Making healthy communities: Designing for wellbeing, safety and equity
Thursday 24 Mar, 2pm–5pm
Victorian Pride Centre, St Kilda
An event presented by the Monash University Department of Design and the Wominjeka Djeembana Research Lab with current and graduating PhD candidates and chaired by Dr Rowan Page, Program Director of Industrial Design in the Department of Design.
Other Spaces
Thursday 17 March to Sunday 27 March
otherspacesexhibition.com
Other Spaces is a virtual exhibition which explores the potential of terrain vague within our cities. The architecture theorist Ignasi de Solà-Morales describes the concept of terrain vague as, “external places, strange places left outside the city’s effective circuits and productive structures”, including “industrial areas, railway stations, ports, unsafe residential neighborhoods, and contaminated places.” The exhibition curates ideas, proposals, and critiques that look specifically at temporary interventions to activate or make use of urban wastelands to question the life cycle and future of our urban environments.
Melbourne Design Week 2022 runs from 17 March to 27 March 2022. To browse the full program of events, go here.
