Melbourne Design Week is the biggest annual international design event in Australia, showcasing creative and captivating projects over the course of an 11-day schedule.
Melbourne Design Week, now in its 9th year, is a crucial forum for showcasing the diversity and excellence of Australian design and architecture while highlighting the range of Australian talent, from up-and-coming to well-established practitioners.
Continuing to explore the overarching theme of ‘Design the world you want’, the next edition will bring into focus the use of energy, ethics and ecology to encourage positive change, reimagine existing systems and offer innovative design solutions to complex global challenges.
Every year, Melbourne Design Week (MDW) is an 11-day program featuring talks, tours, exhibitions, launches, installations, and workshops throughout Australia’s design hub to celebrate design. The program is idea-driven, offering a venue for designers, educators, enthusiasts, thinkers, and businesses to convene, exhibit, and sell new work while debating how design can function as a force for good in a world growing more complicated and unstable by the day.
There are two distinct streams in the program. The National Gallery of Victoria hosts a number of national and international exhibitions and presentations, such as the Melbourne Design Fair and the Melbourne Art Book Fair. Additionally, there is the satellite schedule of shows and activities put on by the design community. About ninety percent of the program consists of the satellite program, which includes events at public gardens, universities, ateliers, studios, retail stores, galleries, and gardens across Melbourne and regional Victoria. An expression of interest is required to participate in the satellite program.
Melbourne Design Week, Australia’s largest and most prestigious annual design festival, will hold its next edition, featuring over 300 cutting-edge exhibitions, displays, symposiums, and talks across metropolitan Melbourne and regional Victoria over the course of 11 days. A keynote address by Nigerian architect Tosin Oshinowo, a symposium examining hypothetical riverbank designs for the Birrarung, the tenth edition of the Melbourne Art Book Fair, and exhibitions of works by Visnja Brdar, Jessie French, Sruli Recht, and Ross Gardam are among the program’s highlights for 2025.
Every year, Melbourne Design Week challenges participants to “Design the world you want,” highlighting the power of design to change our surroundings. In response to this call to action, designers employ their expertise to promote constructive change, rethink current procedures, and provide creative answers to urgent global issues.
This call-to-action is emphasized annually by three pillars that tackle the opportunities and difficulties that designers are currently facing. The three pillars of Melbourne Design Week in 2025 are energy, ethics, and ecology.
Ecology is the study of the complex interactions that exist between people, animals, objects, and environmental systems. Ecological design takes the physical environment into account and adapts accordingly.
Ethics: In order to make a positive impact on their communities, designers tackle societal issues. Design is brought into line with societal values by ethics, which offers and provokes frameworks that direct actions, behaviors, and decisions.
Energy: Renewable energy sources, such as solar, hydro, and wind energy, together with human power, are ushering in a new era for society. How can designers use technology to their advantage and change systems so that they are both powerful and empowering?
Innovative design becomes essential to a better tomorrow as a global community with shared responsibilities. Melbourne Design Week invites you to collectively consider the future we could create through design.
