designEX left us inspired for another year

D4S – Design for Sustainability

Design for Sustainability means designing better, smarter products that are functional, cost effective and have no harmful side effects on human health or the environment.

In its third year, the D4S - Design for Sustainability (D4S) showcase at the designEX exhibition held at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, showcased the latest sustainable products, services and learning tools for the architectural, design and building industries.

From carpets and fabrics to contemporary furniture, visitors were presented with a range of products designed to minimise life cycle environmental impacts, and companies embracing sustainable business practices.

Design Victoria launched What is Eco-design? a practical online resource for industrial, graphic, fashion and textile designers developed by RMIT’s Centre for Design and consultants, WSP Environmental in the Toolbox. What is Eco-design? provides solid grounding in eco-design principles.

Sustainable design should be a feature of all industrial, graphic, fashion and textile designs thanks to this Australian-first interactive online tool, said Environment and Sustainability Minister Gavin Jennings in a Ministerial media release.

“The Brumby Government is committed to supporting Victorian businesses and manufacturers to reduce their environmental impact and develop innovative solutions to climate change,” said Mr Jennings.

“This tool provides designers with quick, easy to understand information which will assist them in integrating eco-design strategies into the lifecycle of the product at the design stage. It will also contribute to the ongoing pursuit of excellence and innovation in the Victorian design industry.”

“With around 80 per cent of a product's environmental impacts locked in at the design stage, and over 76,000 designers in the state, there is significant potential for better resource efficiency and product innovation when eco-principles are widely incorporated.”

Over the three days of the exhibition the Toolbox proved to be a bustling hive of activity as designers keen to learn about sustainable design also seized upon the opportunity to explore Greenfly – the Centre for Design at RMIT and WSP Environmental’s life cycle assessment design tool, and PIQET - the Sustainable Packaging Alliance’s impact evaluation tool, co-located in the Toolbox.

designEX - Form & Function Seminar Series

The Seminar Series at designEX gave visitors the opportunity to hear from some of the most progressive professionals in Australia and international architecture, design and construction as they tackled hot industry themes.

Design Victoria supported Day 2 of the Seminar Series. At the Breakfast Seminar Anders Sorman-Nilsson from Thinque provided the crowd with his guide to future-proofing their business brains. Designers, he said, need to ‘upgrade’ the way they think about design in order to stay relevant, be competitive, and gain market share in changing times. His manifesto Thinque Funky: Upgrade Your Thinking is designed to help make sense of the whacky world we live in by mapping the evolution of business thinking and providing concrete steps for a thinking upgrade.

Keynote Bjarke Ingels, of Bjarke Ingels Group, Denmark, gave an insight into the world of global design and architecture at Yes Is More – A Theory Of Architectural Evolution. Ingels, an award winning architect with an international reputation as a professional who combines shrewd analysis, playful experimentation, social responsibility and humour, provided an impression of how designs evolve through excess and selection, and how his architectural practice BIG operates like an eco system of ideas interested in the idea of adaptation rather than resistance.

At Design Me A Life a panel considered the latest consumer psychographic information that says that consumers want to have it all – and have it all now. The panel, architect Zahava Elenberg, interior designer Cameron Comer and colourist and forecaster Michelle Hopkins, explored from three very different perspectives the ways that design today seeks to create a world in which consumers desire to be actively involved in.

Judy Dymond one of Australia’s foremost design influencers explored what it is that makes design great at The Journey of Possibilities. There’s nothing about ‘mundane’ that is exciting, yet this is a well worn, safe path taken by many designers. Great design, she said, stimulates, arouses and excites in us a gasp of discovery, an awakening of possibility, and gives us products and services that we can’t get enough of. Great design is about having people fall in love with what they see, touch, even taste, smell or hear.

John Eussen of Eussen PR Consulting led a panel of four leading design editors through a discussion on design trends destined to change the way we design at Vision & Influence. Australian consumer magazines are a great source of ‘on trend on time’ information, information that feeds the design field and the creative minds of consumers. Karen McCartney - Editorial Director of Inside Out, Lisa Green – Editor-in-Chief of Australian House & Garden, Sandy de Beyer – features writer for Burke’s Backyard Magazine and Imogen Naylor – Interior Design Editor of Belle, each provided their take on the way they interpret design trends for 2009-2010.

For designers, knowing about trends ahead of consumers is vital in driving innovative and differentiated designs. At Four Scenarios for 2009 and Beyond Richard Watson, leading futurist and international writer and author of Future Files: A History of the Next 50 Years considered the future and our relationship with objects, technology, materials and each other.

With a provocative title the seminar How To Rip Off Australian Designers & Get Away With It! was always bound to draw a crowd! Trevor Choy of Choy Lawyers covered a breadth of intellectual property areas essential to an architect and designer’s livelihood, including how uninspired designers get away with copying, who owns intellectual property in plans and designs and what to do if a client asks you to copy someone else’s work.

At Style, Guts & Stories renowned interior designers Robert Backhouse and Scott Walker of HASSELL discussed critical approaches to interior design practice through completed projects and works in progress including AXA Asia Pacific Headquarters in Melbourne’s Docklands, Oakley Zurich workplace and showroom, ANZ Learning and Breakout Centre and a hotel in Muscat, Oman. That the interior design team speaks more than one design language has been said to be tormenting at times, producing fervent debate and discussion!

5 May 2009