Curated event brings design to the fore

Miami, Stockholm, London and Melbourne are among the many cities to host an annual week of events dedicated to celebrating design.

As of 2023, Perth will be included on this list as it hosts its inaugural design week, with the public encouraged to become more aware of the form and design aspects inherent in many parts of daily life.

Architect Sandy Anghie and designer David Smith joined forces to bring Perth Design Week to fruition.

“David and I independently came up with the idea that Perth needs a design week and we somehow found each other and decided to work together,” Ms Anghie told Business News.

To be held from March 23-29, Perth Design Week will feature exhibitions, tours, talks, workshops and other events showcasing architecture, interiors, landscape, planning, fashion, graphic design, service design and product design.

“It’s an opportunity to recognise our design community is incredibly diverse and comprises people working across all disciplines,” Mr Smith said.

“It’s about design at all scales but all working to the common goal to improve how we all live and work.”

Ms Anghie, who is also the WA president of the Australian Institute of Architects, said there were more than 40 organisations helping deliver the week’s program.

“David and I called everyone we know in design and design-related industries and asked, ‘what do you think about this idea and are you willing to put on an event?’” Ms Anghie said.

“We received an overwhelmingly enthusiastic response from people, and the list of participants is constantly growing.”

The WA branch of the Design Institute of Australia, of which Mr Smith is chair, and the AIA have been joined by the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects, Planning Institute of Australia, Engineers Australia, Design Matters, Australian Graphic Design Association and the Property Council to curate the event.

“Our model is quite different to the rest of Australia and around the world,” Mr Smith said.

“We’ve basically created a coalition of professional or organisation bodies to create the event as opposed to the way it happens in a lot of other places where the design week is generally run by museums or galleries.”

Ms Anghie said the event aimed for inclusivity and all in the WA design world were invited to contribute.

“Our main design week locations are WA Museum Boola Bardip, State Buildings, Council House, Brookfield Place and there will be other little spots around the city for different exhibitions, showrooms and open studios at architecture firms,” Ms Anghie said.

“The idea was to centralise it in the CBD and invite people in to see what designers do and to understand and acknowledge that design is such a big part of our lives.”

Mr Smith said Perth Design Week had been curated to engage the general public.

“For me, that’s the goal really, to increase awareness and appreciation for WA design because there’s a lot of amazing work that happens here a lot of people wouldn’t even know about,” Mr Smith said.

Ms Anghie said design week aimed to highlight an aspect of life often overlooked.

“People don’t realise when you walk down a city street or a suburban street or visit an office space, there’s architecture and landscape designs, and the quality of our experiences every day are determined by the quality of the design around us,” she said.

Program Perth Design Week also hopes to encourage children to learn about the multi-faceted design industry.

WA Museum will be hosting a program for children called Design the Future to engage the younger members of the community.

This event invites students in years five to eight to learn about sustainability, design and technologies by participating in hands-on activities.

While Design the Future will be a ticketed program, most of the events during the week are free.

“All the exhibitions will be free for people to wander through, and those are open for the full week,” Ms Anghie said.

Among those free exhibits is Perth Unbuilt, which will showcase renders, drawings and visualisations by local architecture studios of ‘unrealised’ designs.

“A lot of work by architects is not built, whether its budget constraints or change of government or other reasons; a lot of large-scale projects never see the light of day,” Ms Anghie said.

While part of Perth Design Week, the Perth Unbuilt exhibition will run for an extended period, being displayed at WA Museum from February 20 to March 30.

Design Institute of Australia will present the Icons Exhibition to showcase more than 100 iconic products of Australian design, from the Kambrook power board to Nylex Esky.

“We’re bringing the collection over from Melbourne, which has been exhibited previously in Design Tasmania, and that’s a collection of classic everyday Australian objects you may not have known were designed and made in Australia,” Mr Smith said.

Icons Exhibition will be open for the entirety of Perth Design Week.

“We’re a big sporting state and also a mining-focused state, but we’ve got some great designers here and just the breadth of design from everyday household objects to architecture and built form, interiors and landscape, it’s incredible,” Ms Anghie said.

“Design is such a huge part of our lives, and we really want to get the public and children, young and old, involved.

“Perth Design Week will also be a forum for design professionals to have conversations about sustainability and similar topics, offering discussions on how to do better."