Step inside Robin Boyd’s iconic Walsh Street residence to discover products from some of Australia’s most celebrated designers in the 100 Designs – Australian design at home exhibition, on in Melbourne from October 12-26. 

The exhibition is part of celebrations marking 100 years since Robin Boyd’s birth, inviting visitors to roam through the extraordinary rooms and spaces of Walsh Street in what the Robin Boyd Foundation is describing as a “‘design within a design’ installation”. The collection has been curated by senior lecturer at Monash University Ian Wong.

‘Walsh Street’, the house Boyd designed for his own family in 1957, provides the perfect backdrop for the collection, which sets out to celebrate the accessible and democratic Australian approach to modernism through iconic industrial pieces and everyday objects.

The house remains unchanged from the time it was first designed and occupied by the Boyd Family. Furnished with pieces designed by Boyd’s associates Grant Featherston, Clement Meadmore and others, it provides a unique insight into Melbourne’s design leaders of the ’50s and ’60s.

Rather than hide the 100 products on display behind glass cases, the exhibition’s curators have incorporated them naturally into the spaces at Walsh Street, encouraging visitors to embark on a journey through Australia’s design history. It’s this detail that most excites Wong, saying it’s a rare chance to take these award-winning pieces out of their galleries and museums and immersing them, and visitors, in the Australian home.

But not all the products on display are mid-century. The pieces range from the 1930s to modern day and include work from Featherston and Meadmore, as well as Marc Newson, the designer behind the Embryo Chair.

Also on display, winners of the Prince Philip Prize for Australian Design such as the Wiltshire Staysharp knife, the Sabco timer tap and the Décor BYO wine cooler.

Tickets are available on the Robin Boyd Foundation website.

Photo: Ian Wong