Visitors to Melbourne Design Week can expect a display of 100 lights by more than 100 artists, a renewed exploration of design and death, and a run club past landmarks produced by women when the event returns from 15 to 25 May 2025.

Now in its ninth year, Melbourne Design Week has become Australia’s largest design event. Last year’s festival welcomed more than 100,000 visitors, surpassing the approximate attendance at Paris Design Week and Shanghai Design Week. 

Over 11 days and more than 350 events, exhibitions, talks and installations, Melbourne Design Week 2025 will celebrate the richness of the region’s talent, from a new crop of emerging professionals to local legends of design. 

‘Design the world you want’ 

The event’s recurring theme of ‘Design the world you want’ invites designers showing in the festival to consider how their creative output shapes the future. The results of this call-out have yielded wide-ranging explorations for 2025.

In North Melbourne, 100 lights will illuminate the sweeping Meat Market Stables in a visually spectacular exhibition by 100 artists, designers and makers, staged by Friends & Associates. Visitors will be immersed in a glowing environment replete with lamps, pendants and sconces made by practitioners including Adam Goodrum, Ross Gardam, Tantri Mustika, Marlo Lyda, Jay Jermyn and more.

Reflecting on the themes emerging from this year’s program, Melbourne Design Week’s curator Dr Timothy Moore dubbed the event a “year of retrospectives”. This includes retrospectives looking back on the legacies of two icons of industry – decorative lighting designer Volker Haug and furniture designer Trent Jansen, who will be marking 20 years of designing and making in Australia.

Highlighting the design ingenuity and legacy of First Nations designers, Artbank and Agency Projects will present Catch: Tales of First Nations fishing through the Artbank Collection, an exhibition of fish traps by practitioners including Aunty Kim Wandin.

Returning to the theme of design and death for a second year, Open House Melbourne will present Beyond the Grave, a two-day symposium focused on the architecture, places, issues and practices associated with the end of life. The symposium will commence at the Shrine of Remembrance, reflecting on the role of memorials in urban planning and the future of cemetery design. This will be followed by workshops guiding participants to plan a memorial and a floral design workshop focused on how to honour a loved one.

Sibling Architecture’s Deep Calm exhibition will be the culmination of a year-long research project into how architecture can cater for neurodivergent audiences, looking at whether learning environments and the home can give users a “sensorial hug”, says Moore.

Over by the NGV’s new Dancing Pumpkin sculpture by artist Yayoi Kusama, Moore will also host pop-up designer talks that touch on themes of memory and materials with Sarah Lynn Rees, Danielle Brustman, Fiona Lynch and Jessie French.

In a first for Melbourne Design Week, a series of events will focus on developing industry connections through organised sport. A run club will take participants on a running route past iconic Melbourne sites of design, architecture and sculpture produced by women. Meanwhile, a two-on-two basketball tournament at a Cremorne basketball court (recently painted in a unique Reko Rennie design) will also offer attendees a chance to network while being active.

The Melbourne Design Week 2025 program

• Leading design studios, brands and showrooms will exhibit during the festival, including Objects For Thought presenting their first collaboration with local designer Jordan Fleming. Jardan will lead factory tours and repurposing workshops, while visitors can also enjoy presentations from KFive, Tait, Muji, Zuster, and Dowel Jones with Curio Practice.
• Galleries across the city will activate with exhibitions. Sophie Gannon Gallery will present the annual Designwork exhibition, showcasing pieces by established female designers Elliat Rich and Ashley Eriksmoen.
• Craft will stage a solo exhibition by Locki Humphrey, who has used prickly pear leather to create objects and furniture. 
• Beci Orpin will collaborate with custom furniture maker Softer Studios for her first foray into furniture design, bringing her signature pop of colour and shapes to the collection, which is launching during Melbourne Design Week.
• The sustainable reuse of timber from urban trees will be the focus of programs. Exhibitions including the Robin Boyd Foundation’s Knot Pine exhibition of designs by Alexsandra Pontonio, Melbourne School of Design’s Tout le cochon, and Goodbye London Plane presented by Ma House Supply Store will all present new furniture designs using reclaimed urban timber.
• The festival will culminate with a 12-hour exhibition titled Reimagining the clubhouse by Found Golf, Katie Kelso and Good Sport Magazine. It features works by eight designers that challenge the traditional concept of a sporting clubhouse. The event will include a trophy-making competition and a Design Week closing party at Runner Up bar in Collingwood Yards.
• The Melbourne Design Week Film Festival offers an opportunity to be immersed in design through a series of films curated by Spiro Economopoulos and screened at Lido and Classic Cinemas. Highlights include documentaries on leading female architect of the Modernist Movement Eileen Gray, and Arthur Erickson, a leading architect whose iconic and queer legacy is little known in this country.

The Melbourne Design Week Award

Announced during the opening of Melbourne Design Week, the Melbourne Design Week Award will be awarded to a designer or project for their outstanding contribution to the program. 

In 2024, the award went to Adam Goodrum and Arthur Seigneur (A&A) for their work The Kissing Cabinet, an unfolding, kaleidoscopic cabinet patterned using straw marquetry techniques.

Visit Melbourne Design Week 2025

Melbourne Design Week takes place from 15 to 25 May 2025 at NGV International, St Kilda Road, and at various locations throughout metropolitan and regional Victoria.

The Melbourne Art Book Fair will run concurrently at NGV International from 16 to 18 May, bringing together publishers and designers from the Asia-Pacific region.

With majority of events free to attend, the full program and bookings will be available at designweek.melbourne from mid-April 2025.

Lead image caption: Volker Haug Studio. Photo: Paul Allister