Melbourne Design Week returns for an extended program for its seventh year, from 18 to 28 May. Exploring the theme “Design the World You Want,” the 2023 program features a wide range of landscape-related events, including immersive walks, talks and exhibitions.
Landscape Australia rounds up some of the key landscape architecture and design events:
Acoustic Ecologies—Listening Walk and Field Recording Activity
Saturday 20 May, 9 am – 11 am
Heide Museum of Art
7 Templestowe Road, Bulleen
Renowned nature sound recordist Andrew Skeoch leads an immersive sonic walk and workshop among the gardens of the Heide Museum of Art as part of Open House Melbourne’s Open Nature program. The event will include a peaceful listening walk and field recording activity by the Birrarung, with participants guided in taking field recordings with phones or other devices. Make it a full day at Heide by joining the Yaluk Langa ecology workshop with Heide gardener Luke Murchieat noon.
The Falls precinct of City of Melbourne’s Greenline project by TCL and Aspect Studios.
Image: TCL and Aspect Studios
Stroll the City with the Greenline Team
Wednesday 24 May 12.30 pm – 2.00 pm
107 Victoria Harbour Promenade, Docklands
The designers and urban ecologists behind the City of Melbourne’s planned “city-shaping” Greenline project lead a walk of the project area along the north bank of the Birrarung, including a recently installed floating wetlands trial. The four-kilometre-long Greenline project will create a promenade of parks, open spaces, cultural activations and renewed landscape between Birrarung Marr and the Bolte Bridge. Part of Open House Melbourne’s Open Nature program, this walk is a chance to find out about the project’s development firsthand.
A bee garden in South Melbourne, part of the Melbourne Pollinator Corridor.
Image: Supplied
Urban Wilds: The Inner City as Botanic Garden?
Saturday 20 May 2023 5 pm – 6 pm
Kaleide Theatre
360 Swanston Street, Melbourne
Another event in the Open House Melbourne’s Open Nature program, the afternoon will feature an academic, a guerrilla gardener and the head honcho at Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria leading a discussion on the botanic garden as a landscape archetype arising from a particular mode of Western thought. The keynote speakers are Jock Gilbert of RMIT University, Emma Cutting of the Heart Gardening Project and Melbourne Pollinator Corridor, and Tim Entwisle, director and chief executive of the Royal Botanic Gardens. They ask whether the botanic gardens can be reframed as a new urban wildness: “drawing from place, offering habitat and refuge, and creating new systems of living.” On Sunday, each of the speakers will deliver a site-specific talk furthering the discussion.
Hot Cities: Speculative Design, Artistic Visions and Practical Policy
Bookshop by Uro
Thursday 25 May 6 pm – 7 pm
5/30 Perry Street, Collingwood
This interactive transdisciplinary panel willargue for “radically creative” and “ethically innovative” responses to the world’s worsening urban heat problem. The panel will include contributing authors to the new book Hot Cities: A Transdisciplinary Agenda, hailing from Thailand, Togo, Europe, the UK, USA, Canada and Australia. Drawing on real world examples, the speakers will highlight vital work already underway and reflect on future challenges.
Hidden Rippon Lea: A Sonic and AR Experience of Underground Water Stories
Sunday 28 May 2 pm – 4 pm
Rippon Lea Estate
Hotham Street, Elsternwick
Hidden Rippon Lea is a sound and augmented-reality experience exploring the hidden and underground water narratives of the south-eastern shore of Port Phillip Bay, on Boon Wurrung Country. Through a process of colonial urbanisation, this area’s waterways were gradually filled, piped underground, drained, or built over. This interactive experience will weave together the voice of Boon Wurrung elder N’arweet Carolyn Briggs, recordings of pre-colonial watercourses running under Glen Eira Road, and AR imagery of the intricate nineteenth-century water reticulation system at Rippon Lea to tell a story about the complex and vulnerable water ecologies beneath the city. It will be followed by a panel discussion.
Landscape Architects as Change Makers
Thursday 18 May – Friday 26 May
Dulux Gallery, Melbourne School of Design Building
Masson Rd, Parkville
Presented by Melbourne School of Design in partnership with RMIT University, the Australia-Japan Foundation and the Japan Landscape Architects Union this bilingual exhibition investigates the tactics and strategies of Japanese and Australian landscape architects. The exhibition will feature eight projects, including work by Jane Irwin (Jane Irwin Landscape Architecture), Anton James (JMD Design), Kirsten Bauer (Aspect Studio), Nick Griffin (McGregor Coxall), Toru Mitani (Studio On Site), Tatsuya Hiraga, (Landscape Plus) Hiroki Hasegawa (Studio On Site) and Michio Tase (Plantago).
Friday 26 May – Sunday 28 May
Alexandra Gardens
3 Boathouse Dr, Melbourne
Presented by Kirby Clark, Symphonic Skateboarding is an installation of playful colourful forms that make music when skated on. Designed using collective input from skaters, this installation “challenges the past perceptions of skateboarding and showcases it’s diverse and inclusive future.”
The Caulfield to Dandenong Corridor by Cox Architecture and Aspect Studios.
Image: Peter Clarke
The Public Life of Infrastructure: Elevated Rail and Linear Parks
Wed 24 May 1 pm – 3 pm
Community Hall, The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia
Russell Street, Melbourne
Presented by Aspect Studios, this event examines three level crossing removal projects that have delivered linear parks across Melbourne – the Caulfield to Dandenong LXRP in the east, the Carrum LXRP in the south, and the Moreland LXRP in the north. Curated and hosted by Aspect Studios Kirsten Bauer alongside NGV’s Timothy Moore, the event will see landscape architects, government representatives and academics discuss the “Sky Rail” and its public realm outcomes.
Melbourne Design Week runs from 18 to 28 May. See the full program here.
