2024 Melbourne Design Week
at Collingwood Yards
Melbourne Design Week (MDW) is an 11 day program of talks, tours, exhibitions, launches, installations and workshops across Naarm (Melbourne). Collingwood Yards is proud to be a key venue for the celebrations with our award winning hub of design Bookshop by Uro hosting plenty of events alongside Long Prawn, Stefanino Panino, XFlos, Baracco + Wright and Linda Tegg, and Blomley Cashman Design Office. Check out the full program below and click on any heading to find the corresponding tickets.
Thursday, 23 May – Breaking the pixel ceiling presented by Play on Play and Xflos – 6pm
Play On Play presents the latest edition of Breaking the pixel ceiling, a panel discussion that features remarkable female-identifying creatives. In this iteration, Phebe Schmidt, Gemma Mahoney, Mikaela Stafford, Grace Moore, Nina Gibbs, and Sabina McKenna share insights into their experiences in the creative industries, discussing the challenges they’ve faced and the strategies that propelled them forward. The panel will explore the intersection of running a design or freelance business and its societal impact. They’ll unpack how female and non-binary creatives can drive positive change in their communities, fostering thoughtful frameworks for an ethical future.
Ticketed Event
Thursday, 23 May – Saturday, 1 June – Souvenir by Friends & Associates presented by Bookshop by Uro
Souvenir is a collection of meaningful, functional and affordable objects by Australian designers and craftspeople.
Commissioned by Friends & Associates and hosted by specialist architecture and design bookstore Bookshop by Uro, each artifact encapsulates the current fascinations and preoccupations of its designer in a compact, collectible form.
No ticket required
Saturday, 25 May and Sunday, 26 May – Wandering OFF-MENU (2) presented by Long Prawn
Long Prawn and food history expert Jan O’Connell host a cultural ‘passeggiata’ for MDW guests: a walking meal allowing for a variance in pace, taste, texture, context and historic tales. From the defiance of the dim sim, to the once widely popular chop picnic; enjoy food yarns attached to place and time. With body and digestion in motion together, convivial culinary rest and snack stops will take place throughout the former Gold Street Precinct in Collingwood.
The ticket includes refreshments, snacks and discussions at each stop; including dim sims with Singaporean cottage conservationist Andrew Muir, Jalan Kayu roti prata with Alan and Carol Han from The Old Raffles Place, and a panino with Stef Condello of Stefanino Panino.
Sessions
Saturday: 10am, 2pm
Sunday: 11am
Ticket required
Monday, 27 May – Modern Heritage: Book Launch and Discussion presented by Bookshop by Uro – 6pm
In this live, in-store event for Melbourne Art Book Fair, join the book’s author Cameron Bruhn and architect Monique Woodward in a conversation exploring the privilege that comes with owning a heritage house and the value of research in understanding the architecture’s stories and setting. The speakers share the process of protecting this legacy, while giving new life to these cherished homes.
Ticketed Event
To the Ends of the Earth is a five-day exhibition during Melbourne Design Week accompanying the book launch and talk of the same name. The exhibition takes the reader on an intellectual adventure through a carefully curated selection of places that can be understood as metaphors of contemporary global culture. Spread across all seven continents, from the depths of the ocean to outer space, these places are divided into six chapters: Paradises, Utopias, Machines, Monsters, Ruins, and Instruments. The spectrum ranges from Steve Jobs’ Apple Park in California to a national park in Costa Rica, a small field station for the protection of wild orangutans in Borneo, the Great Green Wall in Central Africa, to the Trump resort Mar-a-Lago. A grand tour of the most pertinent places in the world today.
No Ticket Required
A condensed version of the tour found in Weller’s book of the same name, ranging across Steve Jobs’ Apple Park in California, a small field station for the protection of wild orangutans in Borneo, the Great Green Wall in Central Africa, the Trump resort Mar-a-Lago, and more.
After his presentation, Richard will be joined in conversation with Mark Jacques, director of Openwork landscape architects.
Ticketed Event
Join Bookshop Uro for the launch of two new books that explore ecological renewal through architecture and other forms of creative practice.
In Knowing and Unknowing: The Lives of Repair, discussions revolve around stories of ecological and bureaucratic evolution following the Biennale, with new perspectives from Emily Potter.
Buildings & Living Things: Garden House, explores how a building – Garden House – can sustain life and share space with other living things, as an integrated part of an ongoing project of environmental repair on Bunurong land.
Ticketed Event
Join James Brearley and Steve Whitford, authors of Designing Networks Cities, in discussion with Professor Kim Dovey.
Designing Networks Cities is a ground-breaking manifesto, providing theoretical insights and practical tools for shaping the future of urban design. Springing from a designers’ perspective, this is a reinvention of the entrenched blunt instruments of city-making. Framed by theoretical propositions, and urban precedents, the sixteen-step methodology makes this book a sharp and powerful teaching aid for students and an indispensable guide for professionals.
Ticketed Event
Friday, 31 May – Sunday, 2 June – CO//OPERATE presented by Blomley Cashman Design Office
Blomley Cashman Design Office (BCDO) presents Co//Operate, an interactive exhibition exploring the role of objects as conduits for connection. Co//Operate encourages visitors to contemplate how our spaces and things can influence our relationships in post-lockdown Melbourne. How can our environment be the catalyst that helps shared experience overcome the walls of caution that we learned to erect? BCDO imagines furniture that serves as a tool to heal community in a world that is unnavigable when alone, but rewards collaboration. In this world, you have permission to consider how play, humour and courage can facilitate the joy of exploring the unknown.
