Above: Interactive water tunnel installation by Rice Daubney, designed for the launch of Marc Newson’s collection with Stormtech.

Cafe Culture with Stack

A project is somewhat a human obsession – something to love, nurture, struggle with and ultimately bring to a fruitful conclusion. In fact, the word itself describes the ’process’ by which you ’plan, draft or scheme’ an idea, or to ’throw forth’ in ’proposal or mental plan’. Or so says the Oxford English Dictionary.

Classique with Durie Design

But in one of the fastest-changing industries – design – and driven ever more rapidly by new technologies, how can the Australian architecture and design community rise to the challenge to continually propose something new?

Surface Gallery with Lenard Design Associates

Sydney Indesign’s ’The Project’ is one such outlet that brings together creatives in a unique format each year. Architects, designers and artists collaborate with high-end brands and suppliers for ’The Project’ to push the exhibiting of design to its most imaginative potential.

Designer Rugs with Arthur G

What results is a series of temporary installations that celebrate the length and breadth of local and international creativity, right across the Sydney Indesign map.

KE-ZU with Yellowtrace

This year’s theme, “Process”, inspired installations that reflect upon the very ideas that create, and encourage, great design. According to the KE-ZU team, the “process of designing is about questioning the limits between the real and the imagined possibilities.” Collaborating with Yellowtrace, KE-ZU looked at this theme through the ’creative process of designing spaces’, beginning in their window with an exploration of idea formation through free sketching and progressing into examples of concept planning and 3D design studies.

Zip Industries with Durie Design

Similarly, the ’process’ of reuse and recycling inspired Jamie Durie Design and Zip Industries’ soaring installation at Galleria, with 2000 used plastic bottles suspended over their stand.

Coco Republic with Smeg and Futurespace

It was with a dark theatricality that Coco Republic and Smeg, with Futurspace, confronted their visitors with the notion of ’process’ – Guests were forced to chose to walk through one door over another, each door leading to either Italian brand Smeg or the English furniture supplier, Timothy Oulton.

Chris Hardy with Bellwood

Chris Hardy and Bellwood cut to the core of ’Process’, by responding with their own theme, ’Link’ to visually illustrate the process of developing a new product from concept to manufacture.

Materialised with Altis

Polyflor with CATC Design School Students deconstructed the entire life cycle of the ingredients used to make eco-friendly floor coverings; Materialised with Altis featured sculptural clusters of fabrics; EcoSmart Fire and Fourtwo explored the process of combustion, and; Café Culture with Stack discovered the process of imagination through a woodlands installation that celebrated inspiration and insight.

Ecosmart Fire with FourTwo

It was the integrated waterfalls and motion sensors of Stormtech’s collaboration with Rice Daubney that had visitors in a flap, their latest Marc Newson designed grates ensuring the storm it created – quite literally – was recycled for the next visitor.

Polyflor with CATC Design School

James Richardson with Daniel Dalla Riva invited visitors to reflect on the art of ’taking tea’ at their “Sit, Sip and Savour” pavilion, Classique with Durie Design used forms of DNA strands to express the company’s evolution towards new design collaborations.

James Richardson with Daniel Dalla Riva

Sydney’s Evie Group grouped up with Kikki.K and constructed a geometrical installation to showcase their own wares whilst Hughes Commercial Furniture with So.Co Creative created an interactive landscape which conveyed the process behind designing a piece of furniture.

Bradhly Le with Fanuli

Evie Group with Kikki K

The design collaborations this year were, to say the least, inspiring. And all were driven by the need for diversity and innovation. Just as Living Edge and HASSELL explored the intensification of space, Reece and 6 Hats’ waterfall installation in Surry Hills celebrated the sheer power of the creative process as a backdrop for their annual Bathroom Innovation Awards.

Hughes Commercial Furniture with SO.SO Creative

’Follow The white Rabbit’, that was Seehosu’s and BVN Donovan Hill’s way, while Signature Floorconcepts and Dal+Brands teamed with the Bold Collective and Whitehouse Institute of Design Students creating a feast for the eyes when they transformed an entire space through the use of colour and distorted perspective.

Living Edge Commercial with HASSELL

Surface Gallery with Lenard Design Associates tempted guests with the opportunity to display their own creative process: visitors had the opportunity to create a composition from the same set of coloured modular tiles.

Seehosu with BVN Donovan Hill

“How are creative ideas born?” asked Tables Chairs & Workstations working with E2 with a work based around the procedure of creative thinking. It was all about location, location, location at Warwick Fabrics with Group GSA, as they transformed their Galleria space into a private beach oasis, a riot of pattern and colour, indoors.

Signature Floorconcepts and Dal+Brands with Bold Collective and Whitehouse Institute

Increasingly defined as a collaborative enterprise, in either research or design, having a ’project’ is one of the key prerequisites for how our culture advances itself – one project at a time. By crafting a unique, freestanding sculptural auditorium, the Indesign Podium, Europanel, Geyer and The Initiative created a one of a kind space that became a progressive platform for design thinking and discussion over three days.

Europanel with Geyer and The Initiative

What was your favourite? The Project People’s Choice Award voting is now open! You can win amazing prizes just by voting for the best take on the theme of “Process”. Click here to cast your vote and be in the draw for a chance to win 2 x Maruni SANAA Rabbit chairs valued at $635 RRP each.

Warwick Fabrics with Group GSA

Reece Bathroom Life with 6 Hats

Sydney Indesign
Sydneyindesign.com.au

Images © John Doherty, Fiona Susanto, Rollo Hardy

Indesign: The Event is heading to Hong Kong next. For regular updates on Hong Kong Indesign: The Event and the city’s own ’The Project’ , visit hongkongindesign.com