At the time of writing, I’ve just returned from Business of Design Week (BODW) in Hong Kong, Asia’s most important design conference. For this year’s BODW, Melbourne was the partner city and more than one hundred Victorian designs – across architecture, interiors, industrial design, furniture, fashion, technology and more – were on show to a global audience inside the purpose-built Melbourne Pavilion. In addition, more than twenty Melbourne designers and creatives spoke at the three-day summit. The Honourable Linda Dessau AC, Governor of Victoria, who officially opened the Melbourne Pavilion, said it was the biggest international showcase of Melbourne design ever staged.
Whether it was listening to Rob Adams AM from City of Melbourne speak about dedicating thirty-five years to the “urban choreography” process of transforming Melbourne from a city in decline to one of the world’s most liveable, or seeing Australian Institute of Architects national president Clare Cousins share the groundbreaking Nightingale urban housing model with a Hong Kong audience, or even experiencing the kaleidoscopic slides of Melbourne-born, New York-based installation and graphic designers Tin & Ed, the event stirred in me a great sense of admiration and pride for the Melbourne design community. And then wandering around the Melbourne Pavilion and seeing our world-leading design work, well, to be honest, I shed a little tear of joy. To see so many of you represented at BODW was truly an honour. Sometimes you need to get away to be reminded of how good home really is.
In this issue we celebrate design from Melbourne and beyond, including the Rigg Design Prize and Designing Women exhibitions at the NGV, and project reviews of Caravan II in South Korea by Flack Studio, Berts Bar and Brasserie in Sydney by Akin Atelier, McDonalds In The Sky at Sydney International Airport by Landini Associates, Drift House in Victoria’s Port Fairy by Multiplicity, Techne Architecture and Interior Design’s own office, 75 Myrtle Street by Tonkin Zulaikha Greer and Notre Dame University Student Hub in Western Australia by Cox Architecture.
Enjoy the issue.
– Cassie Hansen, Editor, Artichoke
