Hybrid Digital

Hybrid was the theme of Sydney Design Week in September 2020. It included a special commission of nine design studios to create ‘objects for future homes’ and a planned two-day Design Summit at which panel discussions around issues including new materials and processes and the rise of the collector design sector were to take place. Due to COVID-19, Sydney Design Week was cancelled and much of the program was converted into digital video content, which the Powerhouse Museum proudly presents here for your information and enjoyment.

 

NEW MATERIALS

Fast Tech and Slow Design

Over the past decade design culture has seen a flourishing of experimental approaches, including explorations into the potential of biomaterials, but also a shift in focus to the power of design to change habits and minds. Dr Guy Keulemans delves into new material techniques with leading international designers to discuss the role of materials in global, local and ecological terms. In conversation with designers Charlotte McCurdy (New York), Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin of Formafantasma (Amsterdam), Philip Fimmano (Paris), Kyoko Hashimoto (Sydney), Susana Câmara Leret (León), Tristan Schultz (Burleigh Heads) and Alex Groves of Studio Swine (Tokyo), Keulemans postulates a shift away from materials being employed to create form, to materials used to create sensation.

 

WATCH THE PLAYLIST

Hybrid Digital designers.
Image: Hybrid Digital designers in conversation with Dr Guy Keulemans
Dr Guy Keulemans is a designer, artist and curator researching repair, reuse, materials and generative processes in the context of environmental sustainability.
 
Guy has a Masters in Humanitarian Design from the Design Academy Eindhoven and a PhD from the University of New South Wales, where he also lectures. He has exhibited in museums and galleries in the Netherlands, Germany, Poland and ARS Electronica in Austria. He has four work in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Victoria and has exhibited in and curated shows that have toured around Australia.
 
Guy is currently chief investigator of an Australian Research Council Linkage project investigating transformative repair in partnership with JamFactory, the Australian Design Centre and Design Tasmania. He is represented in Australia by Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert.
 

 

HYPERTENSION

DesignArtCraft

Felix Burrichter in conversation with Anna Aagaard Jensen (Denmark), Katie Stout (US), Rich Aybar (US), Sang Hoon Kim (South Korea), Sam Stewart (US) and Soft Baroque (Slovenia and Australia). These six designers share a tendency towards blurring the boundaries of design, art and craft and exploring the tension between sculpture and function, creating work that is turbocharged with new narratives disrupting paradigms of gender, race and class.

Felix Burrichter is a New York-based creative director, curator, editor and publisher. He studied architecture in Paris and New York before founding multimedia platform PIN-UP, of which he is editor and creative director, in 2006. Burrichter also curates exhibitions and consults on design and architecture projects for various design brands and has edited a number of design and art books, including Cassina: This Will Be the Place (Rizzoli) and PDLEN (Karma). His curatorial projects include Superbenches (Järfalla, 2017) and Blow Up (Friedman Benda, New York, 2019).

 

HYBRID: OBJECTS FOR FUTURE HOMES

Nine design studios collaborated with researchers and practitioners from diverse industries to create furniture and objects exploring the rapidly changing global landscape and the most pressing issues of our time.

Hybrid objects for future homes.
Hybrid: Objects for Future Homes