Melbourne Design Week 2025 returns from 15-25 May with over 350 events, exhibitions, talks and installations.
With such a wide breadth of offerings, ArtsHub has selected inclusions that caught our attention at this year’s event.
In this article:
An exhibition of 100 Lights
Over 100 artists, designers and makers will take over North Melbourne’s Meat Market Stables to present unique lighting designs, ranging from lamps, pendants, sconces and more.
The exhibition is the largest and most ambitious project by Friends & Associates (Dale Hardiman and Tom Skeehan), which selected participants from an open call and seeks to design an experience like no other.
100 Lights showcases a spectrum of emerging to late career practitioners, including Adam Goodrum, Ross Gardam, Do Works, Tantri Mustika, Jay Jermyn, Thread Architecture and more.
Beyond the Grave by Open House Melbourne
Open House Melbourne dives into the theme of design and death for a second year in a row, highlighting a two-day symposium, Beyond the Grave. The program is curated by Executive Director of Open House Melbourne, Tania Davidge, who advocates for good design in addressing social issues.
The program kicks off at the Shrine of Remembrance, reflecting on the role of memorials in urban planning and the future of cemetery design.
While the symposium will be held in May, the official Open House Melbourne Weekend runs from 26-27 July, with more programming details to come.
Melbourne Art Book Fair
The 11th iteration of the Melbourne Art Book Fair returns across three days (16-18 May) at NGV International and will host over 100 museum, independent, art and design publishers, both local and abroad. South East Asian publishers such as Cahyati Press (Indonesia), Spacebar Zine (Thailand), Binatang Press! (Indonesia) and Suburbia Projects (Malaysia) highlight strong representation from the region.
The annual event is a great reminder of the art of the hard-copy form, and the delight in a tactile reading experience.
Read: Are art books an anomaly in the publishing industry?
Iconic architectural gems to host A New Normal
Visions by 12 Melbourne architects on making the city self-sufficient by 2030 will be presented at the Boyd Baker Compound in Bacchus Marsh, regional Victoria. Located approximately 50 kilometres north-west of Melbourne, the compound includes three buildings designed by Robin Boyd and Roy Grounds, two highly regarded 20th century architects.
The eccentric residents will host concepts by MUIR, Baracco + Wright, and NH, ranging from a water treatment plant in the form of public sculpture to transforming abandoned buildings into multifunctional residential housing.
A New Normal was first presented at Melbourne Design Week in 2021, and won the Melbourne Design Week Award that year.
The proposals presented in 2025 have the potential to drive real-life solutions, and the architecture is worth the drive out.
Trent Jansen design survey
Trent Jansen: Two Decades of Design Anthropology celebrates the career of the established Australian designer who has applied his method of design anthropology to creating furniture and lived objects.
Design anthropology is an approach that employs ethnographic research to achieve human-centred design, where Jansen focuses on environmental ecology, personal relationships and cultural traditions.
Jansen worked under Dutch designer Marcel Wanders in Amsterdam, before turning to Australia to set up his own design studio. The exhibition presents Jansen’s early works, as well as new collaborations with First Nations makers including Johnny Nargoodah, Errol Evans, Tanya Singer and artist Maree Clark.
The full program of Melbourne Design Week 2025 will be released in mid-April.
