Melbourne Design Week Award

The Melbourne Design Week Award, presented by Mercedes-Benz, is an annual prize celebrating an exceptional contribution to Australia’s premier design event.

The Melbourne Design Week Award is a significant recognition of creative excellence within the local and international design community. Each year, the award highlights designers that thoughtfully and effectively respond to the Melbourne Design Week theme, celebrating innovation and originality. Winners are acknowledged for their impactful contributions to the event and receive a cash prize generously supported by Major Partner Mercedes-Benz.

2024 winner: A&A

Adam and Arthur (A&A) are acclaimed for their significant contributions to Melbourne Design Week and the Australian design industry. Since 2017, their collaboration has produced contemporary furniture blending historical craft techniques with modern aesthetics. Adam’s designs, enhanced by Arthur’s mastery of straw marquetry—a technique from the 1600s using premium rye straw from Burgundy, France—feature unique patterned veneer surfaces. For Melbourne Design Week 2024, A&A introduced their most ambitious work, The Kissing Cabinet, at Tolarno Galleries. This piece reflects their interest in mechanical furniture, made popular in the 1800s, which integrated design, engineering, and craftsmanship in items like cabinets and desks with hidden compartments. The Kissing Cabinet serves as a modern homage, transforming to reveal a hidden compartment before closing into the shape of ‘kissing lips’.

2023 winner: Paula Savage

Paula Savage is a senior Mualgal artist from Moa Island in the Torres Strait renowned for her ability to bring to life the enduring traditional material practices of her cultural heritage. Savage presented three extraordinary works – Dollar Reef, No 3 Reef and No 2 Reef – at the Melbourne Design Fair as part of the FOCUS exhibition, which brought to attention the skills and conceptual prowess of five accomplished Australian female designers. Through these works, Savage shares stories of her home in the Kubin community on Moa Island and the reefs off the coast of Lag Mua. The three works were acquired by the National Gallery of Victoria.

2022 winner: Revival Projects, led by Robbie Neville

Revival Projects received the MDW Award for its exhibition Zero Footprint Repurposing. Led by Robbie Neville, the innovative building company established one of the world’s first free repurposing hubs during the festival. Located in Collingwood, the hub offers the design and construction industry a space to store salvaged demolition materials for reuse, giving them a second life instead of sending them to landfill. Since its debut during the festival, the hub has expanded its impact by creating Australia’s only inner-city timber mill at the same site.

2021 winner: A New Normal, curated by Finding Infinity

The exhibition A New Normal exhibited fifteen ideas by Melbourne’s leading architects and designers to transform Greater Melbourne into a self-sufficient city by 2030. The designs, which included a sewage treatment plant that also functions as a nightclub and community hubs repurposed from multi-storey car parks, explored how sustainable technologies can enhance the city’s health and liveability. Included with this ambitious exhibition was a $100 billion zero-carbon strategy for Melbourne. Following the success of the Melbourne exhibition, the A New Normal project has been developed for Sydney, Perth and Guadalajara, and nine of the Melbourne projects have moved beyond speculation and are now progressing toward real-world implementation.

2020 winner: Georgia Nowak and Eugene Perepletchikov

Georgia Nowak and Eugene Perepletchikov won the inaugural Mercedes Benz Design Week award in 2020 for their work Aurum, which explored their complex relationship with gold through the medium of film. This film was acquired by the National Gallery of Victoria and was exhibited at Sampling the Future at NGV Australia in 2021-2022.

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