Surry Hills found its rhythm early at Saturday Indesign 2026 on the 12th of September. Across the precinct, showrooms became places to make, listen, taste, test and talk, with every stop offering a different way into design. There were forests and floral installations, molten glass and metal workshops, rugs in the making, furniture challenges, live upholstery and conversations that moved easily between material knowledge and the way spaces make us feel.
That sense of participation began at Miss Amara, where rugs were taken off the screen and placed firmly in the real world. The Material Edit led visitors through five stations and five material stories, creating a tactile introduction to the fibres, provenance, construction and specification details behind the range. It was an apt first physical experience for a brand so familiar online, giving the design community the chance to meet the team and engage with the rugs up close.
Founder and Chief Creative Officer Alex Weller extended the conversation through Designed for Real Life, reflecting on the distance between designing a beautiful space and designing one that truly works for the people who inhabit it. It brought practical questions of comfort, resilience and everyday use into the material discussion, while also marking the launch of Miss Amara Trade.
The story of rugs and making continued at Tappeti Rugs. From Fibre to Floor opened up the natural and performance fibres used across the brand’s custom collections, showing how a single material decision can change texture, colour, lustre, feel and long-term performance. Behind the Loom then brought the handmaking process into view, inviting guests to try tufting part of a rug and gain a closer appreciation of the skill, time and many decisions held within the finished surface.
Elsewhere, workplace design became unexpectedly competitive. Wilkhahn challenged visitors to build a WiChair against the clock, transforming the chair’s 34-component construction into a fast-paced test of dexterity and design understanding. Beneath the fun was a clear demonstration of intelligent construction, repairability and circular thinking. The leaderboard gave everyone a reason to watch, compare and have another go.
Just around the corner, Savage Design turned technical knowledge into one of the precinct’s most hands-on experiences. Ministry of Metal decoded brass, stainless steel, mild steel and aluminium by encouraging architects and designers to handle the materials, compare their characteristics and understand how they behave, age and perform. Across three guided sessions and the all-day experience, visitors could take what they had learned and use it to customise a tactile metal artefact.
Related: Paddington gets hands-on at Saturday Indesign 2026
The program had already begun on Friday, when Savage Design hosted three additional Ministry of Metal sessions. That extended format gave the subject the time it deserved and made the showroom feel as much like a working material laboratory as a display space.
Light, sound and surface met in a particularly vivid way at the shared home of Euroluce, Bang & Olufsen and Bolon. Euroluce presented new architectural and decorative lighting from Flos, Vibia, Wästberg and Oluce, including MAAP by Erwan Bouroullec, Glowing Track, Raw Elements and the Milan 60 Years Classics collection. The breadth of releases allowed visitors to move between precise architectural systems and more expressive decorative pieces, seeing how each could shape atmosphere in a different way.
Bang & Olufsen added an acoustic layer through immersive listening sessions and Atelier, its bespoke service for creating speakers in custom colours, materials and finishes. Bolon, meanwhile, brought pattern, colour and tactility underfoot through its woven flooring, completing an environment in which the senses were not discussed in isolation but experienced together.
That idea was explored directly in The Sensory Surface, with neuroscientist Dr Hayley North, Electrolight director Donn Salisbury and Cox Architecture director Brooke Lloyd joining moderator Alice Blackwood. Across two sessions, the panel considered how light, sound, texture and material influence atmosphere, comfort, wellbeing and connection. Cooking on Mario Bellini’s Onfalos brought Italian design into another sensory register, while Campari’s Negroni Edit gave the afternoon a suitably convivial finish.
Transformation was at the centre of Advanta, where students from Billy Blue College of Design took creative control of the showroom for Shrouded. Responding to the 2026 Project theme of Alchemy, the immersive installation placed Advanta furniture within a setting designed around intrigue and discovery, giving emerging designers a genuine platform to test an idea at full scale.
The installation was only the beginning. Advanta’s R&D Voting Lab invited visitors to weigh in on ideas being considered for future product ranges, bringing the audience into the earliest stages of development. Live sewing and upholstery demonstrations revealed the skilled work within each piece, while remnants from the upholstery process were transformed into take-home pencil cases. Matcha and mocktails kept the atmosphere relaxed as making, experimentation and conversation unfolded around the showroom.
Material innovation took on a different character at Bachli Furniture. Created with Murray Industrial Hemp, From Fibre to Form used Snøhetta’s modular Array sofa to connect architecture, furniture and more sustainable material choices. Visitors moved through the multi-sensory installation before using 3D-printed models to develop their own Array configurations, turning the adaptability of the system into something they could test for themselves.
Bachli’s wider program kept returning to the relationship between furniture and everyday life. Meryl Hare of Hare + Klein and Snøhetta senior product designer Matt Irvine considered the sofa as a form of architecture, looking at how it shapes movement, gathering and connection. Design Your Calm paired modular experimentation with ideas of inclusion, belonging and mental wellbeing, while Krinklewood’s biodynamic wine tasting drew out shared values of craftsmanship, longevity and respect for natural processes. The showroom’s Saturday program followed a Friday evening conversation with designers from Snøhetta, creating an early start to a particularly rich weekend of ideas.
At K5 Furniture, the city gave way to an evocative Finnish forest. Haltija, The Guardian of Every Place and Thing drew on the guardian spirits of Finnish folklore, bringing Nikari furniture, Marimekko textiles and sculptural landscapes together in a quiet, immersive installation. It offered a moment to slow down while revealing how landscape, ritual, craft and design remain closely connected in Finnish culture.
The accompanying Forest to Form conversation deepened that story. Johanna Vuorio and Jenni Mikkonen of Nikari joined K5 founder and CEO Erna Walsh and Studio Edwards founder Ben Edwards, with Genton lead interior designer Marika Haromo hosting. Together, they traced the influence of Finland’s forests on architecture and furniture, and considered why timber, tradition and careful making remain so relevant to contemporary practice.
Nature appeared again at Molteni&C, although this time through a more sculptural lens. Geometry of Nature marked the newly opened Sydney flagship with a floral installation by September Studio, set among pieces by creative director Vincent Van Duysen, Gio Ponti and other celebrated architects and designers. The pairing created a gentle dialogue between organic form, architectural geometry and the enduring quality of the furniture collection.
At Nook Collections, light became the thread connecting a full day of making, conversation and hospitality. Installations by Parachilna, ILANEL and Mark Studio sat alongside the showroom’s latest lighting collections, while an origami workshop inspired by Parachilna’s Oïphorique installation showed how a simple folded form could become sculptural when illuminated.
The later glassblowing experience with artists Mark Eliott and Simi Eliott made transformation even more visible. Participants contributed coloured molten glass to a collaborative sculpture and watched it grow through heat, breath and shared making, with the completed work destined to become a one-of-a-kind light. Mark Studio also led a thoughtful conversation about how local materials, craft and place can give contemporary lighting a richer story.
Nook Collections hosted Surry Hills’ official Saturday Indesign Design Discussion, bringing atmosphere, emotion and wellbeing into focus through lighting. Genevieve Wild of Wildly Illuminating, Jason Gibney of JGDW and Ilan El of ILANEL joined moderator Kate Goodwin for a rich exchange on the less tangible qualities that make a space resonate. Breakfast, lunch and the Golden Hour Social gave those ideas room to continue beyond the formal program, with designers, makers and visitors lingering among the installations as the afternoon wound down.
What made Surry Hills memorable was the range of experiences held within a relatively compact precinct. Miss Amara and Tappeti Rugs made fibres and rug craftsmanship tangible; Wilkhahn and Savage Design turned product knowledge into participation; Euroluce, Bang & Olufsen and Bolon built an environment around the senses; and Advanta, Bachli Furniture, K5 Furniture, Molteni&C and Nook Collections each transformed their showrooms through installations, making and conversation. Together, they created a day that felt curious, social and full of discovery, with design experienced from every angle.
Saturday Indesign
saturdayindesign.com
