Mdw 26 - link in bio
Red bluff sandstone, eucalyptus infused water, endemic grasses all built from a long exploration into the red bluff formation - formed during the Pliocene epoch. It builds on @matt_muir36 research into seasonal harvesting of Boon Wurrung materials and @marni.reti experience in rammed earth and mud bricks. We are making a table and having a party. We think that everything should start with a yarn and a warm cuppa. This is our offering and we’d love you to come say gday. It’s just a start.
Collaborators:
@marni.reti@matt_muir36@jack.gillmer@shannywins@constructiveworks@relativeprojects@anita.c.king@4langridgestreet@sblastudio@trouthouse_@nicholascurrie@alchemyorange@brunswickstreetgallery@NGVMelbourne and @Creative_Vic , include #NGV #MelbourneDesignWeek #CreativeVic and #CreativeState and the program dates (14-24 May 2026). Melbourne Design Week is a vital platform for emerging and established creative practitioners, offering the Australian design community and audiences the opportunity to engage with a diverse program of talks, tours, exhibitions, installations, and workshops. Melbourne Design Week is Australia’s largest and leading annual design festival and takes place from 14–24 May 2026.
Photo credits mix of Astrid Mulder, @plopon and bk
Melbourne design week 2026
But First, Country: An Evening of Connection
One-night gathering centred on food, culture, and connection. The event brings together mob, allies, and supporters in an intimate, welcoming setting that encourages investment in First Nations design futures. Guests are invited to yarn, connect, and celebrate.
The atmosphere is shaped through music, and a curated visual environment featuring imagery of Australian endemic flora. Styling and spatial design transform the installation into a vibrant, sensory experience.
More than an installation, it is a moment of gathering, grounded in joy, storytelling, and collective presence, where people can eat, listen, laugh, and feel good together.
Honestly just come yarn and have fun fuck yas
Link in bio
Milaythina kani (mee lie dthee nah – kah nee) - Country speaks
How do we help ground landscapes in time and place?
How do we allow landscapes to speak for themselves again when they have been talked over, or silenced over the last couple of centuries?
The Palawa worldview in Lutruwita (Tasmania) offers a reality where country speaks to us through expression of seasonal changes, weather conditions. Where observations of these expressions are fundamental in knowing how to relate to places in a way that values sustainability and continuation.
How do we approach the notion of milaythina kani in our Lutruwita projects? One way, is understanding the local ecological web - and making sure that we make space for all web members – the notion here being that if we are providing the right plants, exposing natural systems and understanding endemic habitats – we are re-establishing the infrastructure where Country and people can speak to each other again.
A powerful example of allowing Country to speak again, is through the daylighting of urban creeks that were buried in pipes post colonisation. We know that the removal of flowing water from an ecosystem that requires it to function will have serious consequences for endemic species. We also know that no matter how hard we try to appropriate natural systems out of the landscape they are going to eventually come back in a few extreme weather events.
If we don’t allow space for Country speak – it will eventually yell at us.
Every project is an opportunity towards healing ecosystems – and we will always be seeking this opportunity.
(Very grateful for Trish Hodge’s compilation of ‘Palawa tunapri’ for sharing glimpses of Lutruwita ancestral wisdoms, and very grateful for those who carried such knowledge into the present day against all odds) - Delicate words by Matt 💚
Nothing here is waste—only matter, waiting to become something else.
This fermentation landscape follows a quiet, cyclical logic: what leaves the process finds its way back again. Spent grains return to the soil, water moves, settles, and begins anew, and materials drift between states—never fixed, always becoming.
Like fermentation, the planted spaces are alive and in slow transformation. Things break down, soften, and re-form, folding past and future into the same ground.
In this place, design is not an end point, but a loop—where every ending is simply a fresh return.
A reflection on FermenTasmania - words by the lovely Colin Chen. 💕🦠 📷: @mickeyzito
🌾🌾 When we undertook the landscape design for House in the Dry in Tamworth on Kamilaroi/Gomeroi Country, our clients wanted to regenerate the grasslands surrounding their house and attract back the local fauna to the area. Did you know that only 10% of White Box-Yellow Box-Blakely’s Red Gum Grassy Woodland and related communities still exist in south-eastern Australia?
The grasslands were in a sorry state, undernourished and full of agricultural weeds. To regenerate the grasslands we used a seed spray to return native grasses and wildflowers to the soil they had once sprouted from and a flower full courtyard.
The garden is now in full bloom and we are so happy (hearts full) to see these recent photos of some lovely furry friends visiting and enjoying the flora. 🦘🦘🦘💚💚💚
Fire, Water, Building. Opening 20.02. ✨ How to build with fire and water in a time of risk aversion?
“Fire, Water, Building” reimagines architecture’s relationship with nature, shifting from risk aversion toward a more deliberate engagement with these elemental forces. Set against the backdrop of recent environmental crises—bushfires, building fires, and floods—the exhibition examines safety-driven design paradigms and the regulatory logics that shape contemporary practice. In their place, it calls for a more nuanced, historically informed, and ecologically attuned understanding of how humans inhabit shifting environments.
Bringing together 13 practices working creatively with fire and water, the exhibition assembles projects, research, and speculative works that propose alternative ways of building, caring, and living with risk, where fire and water are aim to be understood, negotiated, and designed with.
Contributors: @alankim.xyz@architectureassociates@architect_brewkoch@avavavavava@collectiveterritories@heliotope_studio@sblastudio@ssdh.studio@mic_mahn@melbartlibrary@nmbw_architecture_studio@sibling_architecture@simulaa_
The exhibition also features work by RMIT Architecture students, alongside an extended literary library on fire and water curated by Melbourne Art Library.
With thanks to RMIT School of Architecture & Urban Design for their support.
Curators: @24nuggets@allanburrows
A friendly and wonderful Council has opened the doors of their materials stockyard to us. @stonningtoncitycouncil
It’s piled high with left over pavers, unsued kerbs, custom cut stone shapes, piles of terrazzo. It’s a reservoir of patterns and materials left over from projects, or from projects which never went ahead. It’s like Christmas for materials, or even better, hard rubbish day.
We’re working on a park around the corner from here, and we think we can do all the surfaces with these materials, and we think the project will be all the more interesting and exciting for it.
Bendigo Tafe Precinct by SBLA Studio:
“Upside down Country” is when men dig down into the earth’s core to extract its riches. Aeons of geological and ecological evolution is flipped on its head. Lands occupied by countless generations are covered by structures built on hollow foundations. Coined by Dja Dja Wurrung peoples, “upside down Country” describes the colonial extraction and transformation, in all directions, of their entwined culture and unceded lands.In a full redesign of the Kangan Institute’s Bendigo campus, SBLA Studio scourred back new surface additions, allowing Country’s true nature to reveal itself. Planting has been returned to 80 per cent endemic species – bull mallee, paper daisy and kangaroo grasses – showcasing a prototype for Bendigo’s future restoration."
@sblastudio
#landschaftsarchitektur #landschaftsarchitekten #landskapsarkitektur #landscapearchitecture #landscapearchitect #publicspace #socialspace #landscapedesign #urbanism #urbanplanning #urbandesigner #landscape #landscapephotography #paisage #landschaft #paisaje #paysage #landskap #landskapsarkitekter #australiandesign #australianarchitecture #australianlandscape #australianlandscapedesign #australianlandscapearchitecture
As the break comes, it’s time to pause and reflect on what has been. To celebrate all the joy, play and creativity that we have been fortunate enough to be part of.
At the centre it is always about people and the environment that we all inhabit.
So, with this in mind, we share these moments, and I (Simone) say thank you to all those that we have worked with and a very special thanks to the SBLA’ers who, together make this studio whole and the projects what they are. Places that are designed to wrap people in a big warm blanket.
As the break comes, it’s time to pause and reflect on what has been. To celebrate all the joy, play and creativity that we have been fortunate enough to be part of.
At the centre it is always about people and the environment that we all inhabit.
So, with this in mind, we share these moments, and I (Simone) say thank you to all those that we have worked with and a very special thanks to the SBLA’ers who, together make this studio whole and the projects what they are. Places that are designed to wrap people in a big warm blanket.
Reflections on getting to know Palawa Country - King Island. Getting to learn the lingo - the language. Learn it so you can have a conversation with it in its mother tongue. When you know the language you can contribute to its cause. You get to know the gaps and get to know what needs healing, species that need homes (rookeries). When we know the language really well:...you can get the local conditions and ecologies to keep your landscapes maintained. The wind keeps it all shaped, the seabirds keep it fertilised, the ground covers hold water against the sand, and endemic fire-retardant shrubs usher burns away from structures.
Words, drawings and hands by Matt Wakelin ❤️
