Melbourne Design Week 2026 Members and Friends Program
As part of this year’s Melbourne Design Week, we’re incredibly excited to be hosting our own exhibition and to be part of a city-wide program that celebrates creativity, making, and contemporary design in all its forms.
With the next few weeks set to be packed full of open studios, exhibitions, talks, installations, and workshops across Melbourne, there’s no shortage of inspiring things to see and experience. We’ve been busy planning our own contribution, but along the way we’ve also come across a number of events, exhibitions, and makers that genuinely caught our attention.
So, whether you’re mapping out your Design Week schedule or simply looking for an excuse to explore the city a little differently, here are a few of the events we’re especially looking forward to.
Industry
Presented by Isabel Avendaño Hazbún with Raven Mahon
Industry is an exhibition about legitimate sustainability with the aim of creating a circular economy model within a small designer–maker studio. The result is a series of speculative works — furniture, lighting, homewares, textiles and sculpture; some finished, some still concepts — where the entire ecological impact of the object is considered: materials, production, use, storage, transport and disposal, compelling a revision of outdated manufacturing models where sustainability becomes the true measure of an object’s worth.
100 CHAIRS
Presented by Friends & Associates
100 CHAIRS features the work of over 100 Australian creatives, studios, artists, architects and practices exploring the chair as a medium. The exhibition provides a platform for creatives at all career levels to present work collectively. Following on from Melbourne Design Week 2025’s landmark exhibition 100 LIGHTS, 100 CHAIRS imposes stricter requirements that the work must be both designed and made within the country.
Second Nature
Presented by Mal Thomas Design & Jeanie Mulligan & Alex Lesniowski & Harry Zanios & Adam Stewart & Patrick Holcombe
In collaboration with Curve Design, Second Nature presents a curated exhibition of innovative, Australian-made furniture pieces designed specifically for small footprints and multi-functionality.
These objects facilitate connection and calm in busy urban ‘third places’, such as neighbourhood cafes or home retreats. The exhibition invites reflection on how conscious design shapes everyday social spaces.
Felled: Reimagining Timber Supply in Contemporary Craft Practice
Presented by Craft Victoria
Felled reimagines timber supply sources in contemporary woodworking practice. Six makers and designers with specialised knowledge of timber engage the material beyond newly processed, machined slabs and find possibilities in existing materials, including timber waste and plant debris, as furniture and object-design making material.
Australian Furniture Design Award 2026 – Living Well Living Small
Presented by Stylecraft Furniture & Lighting & National Gallery of Victoria
Visit the new Stylecraft showroom during Melbourne Design Week to see the winning and shortlisted entrants in the sixth edition of the biannual Australian Furniture Design Award – including new work responding to the theme Living Well Living Small by Joanne Odisho, Isabel Avendano Hazbun, Nika Biggs, Besley & Spresser, and Aileen Sage Architects. View the exhibition on the ground floor, then continue to Level One to explore Stylecraft’s Celebrating Australian Design exhibition.
Latent Space: Tradition Reframed
Presented by Anton Gerner Furniture
Latent Space: Tradition Reframed presents a new body of work by Melbourne/Naarm furniture designer and maker Anton Gerner. Building on ideas explored in his 2025 Melbourne Design Week exhibition The Storm, The Craft & The Future, this exhibition continues an ongoing investigation into how traditional furniture languages can exist within a contemporary design context.
Conversations by Jon Goulder and Collaborators
Presented by ALPHA 60
Jon Goulder presents a series of design outcomes shaped by ongoing dialogue, collaboration and material research. Central to the program is a partnership with Melbourne fashion house ALPHA60, culminating in the opening of Chapter House as a new Design Week venue formed through years of conversation between Alex and Georgie Cleary and Goulder.
New works include a lighting collection and pressed leather chair developed with Andrew Carvolth, grounded in material intelligence, hands-on process and the belief that form is resolved through making.
Tactile Dialogues: Fragments of Matter
Presented by Ryan Fernandes & Made by Morgen
A fragment can be a physical piece of an object, a trace of something left behind, a half-remembered memory or a glimpse through a half-closed door. Sometimes detached or incomplete. Sometimes shifting.
Tactile Dialogues: Fragments of Matter invites audiences to experience fragmentation as both material and concept — a space where new forms, partial views and traces of thought become the starting point for dialogue, curiosity and reflection.
Lines of Force
Presented by Ash Allen
This exhibition pays homage to the iconic work of three female design luminaries — Simone LeAmon, Helen Kontouris and Laura McCusker.
Ash Allen has recreated, in steel weldmesh, a piece from each of their portfolios and presents the narrative behind each work. Participants are: Simone LeAmon, Helen Kontouris, Laura McCusker, Ash Allen.
Designed by Human, Cut by Machine
Presented by Conrad-S
Designed by Human, Cut by Machine envisions a future where Australian design embraces both human creativity and technological precision to shape a more sustainable, circular world. Through a curated collection of Conrad-S furniture, prototypes and sketches, the exhibition explores how design can balance craft and code to build the world we want, one that values resourcefulness, longevity and sustainability.
Stonygrad: Material Encounters
Presented by Jessica Lillico and Sean Fennessy
Stonygrad, the iconic self-built home of modernist artist Danila Vassilieff, was constructed by hand in the Warrandyte bush from stone and timber found on site. Taking decades to complete, it is at once crude and considered, collapsing the distinction between art and design and challenging conventional ideas of dwelling.
A State of Matter
Presented by Hortenzia
This site-specific installation explores the interaction of materials, form and light within a space. Hard and soft, light and dark, natural and manufactured, materials create tension through contrast while forms highlight negative space. Objects are positioned not as isolated items but as active participants within the environment, absorbing, reflecting and projecting light.
This exhibition is presented by the newly formed exhibition space Room, curated by Sophie Sideris.
More Making
Presented by Studio Eric Yuen
More Making is an exhibition, a series of objects, an open studio and a workshop, all rotating around the act of object making from home.
The materials used are easily acquired and off-the-shelf — timber battens, slotted angles, plywood, screws and bolts. The tools are accessible and low entry, including handsaws, measuring tape and chisels and cordless drills.
KEEP: Forever Objects Designed by Six Australian Architects
Presented by American Hardwood Export Council
What happens when some of Australia’s most respected architects turn their attention from buildings to objects?
KEEP brings together six architectural practices to design furniture intended to last within a culture of disposability. Presented with Cult and curated by David Clark, the exhibition explores permanence, Australian craftsmanship and material integrity through a series of new works made from American hardwoods.
How Did “Sustainability” in Design Become a Dirty Word?
Presented by Authentic Design Alliance & Design Made Podcast
The word “sustainability” has lost its way. Once a serious commitment, it has become marketing-speak, and the open door to greenwashing.
So what conversations should we be having instead, and how do we contribute to genuine change?
Melbourne Design Week is an initiative of the Victorian Government through Creative
Victoria. You can view the full program: designweek.melbourne