Design
Melbourne Design Week 2026 at Studio Dokola
May 8, 2026
Explore Studio Dokola During Melbourne Design Week 2026
Melbourne Design Week (MDW) is Australia’s leading design festival, held annually over 11 days in Melbourne and regional Victoria, an initiative of the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria. Driven by ideas, MDW provides a platform for designers, thinkers, educators, businesses, and enthusiasts to come together to share perspectives, showcase new work, and consider how design can be a force for good in an increasingly complex world. From 14–24 May 2026, Melbourne Design Week returns with exhibitions, installations, and events across the city.
Studio Dokola will be involved in and hosting many events during 2026's MDW under the theme 'Design The World You Want', or alternatively asking don't design the world you don't want.
More on the program can be found here: https://designweek.melbourne/
Masterclasses
Goblets & Chalice
Studio Dokola, along with Gordon Studio Glassblowers (https://www.gordonstudio.com.au/), are hosting South Australian based artist Drew Spangenberg (https://www.dksglassdesign.com/about) for masterclass pairing focused making unpacking the fundamentals of cup and goblet making, with a lively social program. Join us as a spectator from the 13-15th May 10am - 5pm as we host an open door program during the masterclass.
https://designweek.melbourne/event/goblets-chalice/
Exhibitions
A Sense Of Occasion — THOMAS MAXAM Studio
A Sense of Occasion, the champagne bucket becomes more than an object; it becomes a vessel for shared human moments, holding not just ice, but a moment to celebrate and gather.
14-17 May, 2026
NHO, 1/108 Moor St, Fitzroy
https://designweek.melbourne/event/a-sense-of-occasion/
Synthesis — Studio Shields
An immersive interior installation curated by Ruby Shields featuring over 40 artists, designers & makers. Set within the Bishop’s Parlour at Abbotsford Convent, Synthesis explores how we live with design. Colour, material, light and scent held together, not in isolation, but in relationship.
15-18 May 2026 | Opening: Sat 16 May, 6 – 9pm
Bishop's Parlour, Abbotsford Convent, 1 Saint Heliers Street, Abbotsford VIC, Australia
https://designweek.melbourne/event/synthesis/
Tactile Dialogues: Fragments of Matter — Ryan Fernandes & Made by Morgen
The exhibition invites audiences to experience fragmentation as both material and concept — a space where new forms, partial views and traces of thought become the starting point for dialogue, curiosity and reflection.
14-17 May 2026
Made by Morgen, 57-59 Weston St, Brunswick VIC 3056, Australia
https://designweek.melbourne/event/tactile-dialogues-fragments-of-matter/
Finite — Alterfact & Richard Greenacre
Design today operates within clear limits: of resources, time, labour, attention, place and relationships. Nothing is endless. Materials are consumed, energy is spent, time passes, and relationships shift. Finite invites you to engage with these realities through your own practice and perspective.
Speculative Future responds to Finite by considering glass as a material shaped by limits: of heat, labour, knowledge and resource. The series imagines glass as both relic and proposition — a material once used to imitate value, questioning how the fragility of handmade knowledge endures within glass’s metamorphosis into an increasingly industrial, omnipresent material world.
8–10 & 15–17 May 2026
Dowel Jones showroom, 404 Fitzroy St, Fitzroy VIC 3065, Australia
https://designweek.melbourne/event/finite/
Relics and Remains — Curtis Bloxsidge
A show of works sitting at the threshold between destruction & persistence, loss & survival,speculation & archaeology.
14-24 May 2026 | Opening: Thu 14 May, 6pm -10 pm
Nord, 261 Albert Street, Brunswick VIC, Australia
https://designweek.melbourne/event/relics-and-remains/
Ephemeral Ebb — Amy Marlene Forbes
Bringing together furniture, objects and textile pieces that blend form and function, the exhibition reflects on transience and transformation through eroded surfaces, precarious forms and material tensions.
15-18 May 2026 | Opening: Fri 15 May, 5.30 – 10.30pm
Flower Club (Xflos Studio in Collingwood Yards), 30B Perry St, Collingwood VIC, Australia
All Heaven Broke Loose — KOEH Studio
The exhibition convenes objects that operate through gentleness, attending to form, material and bodily address as sites of meaning.
14-16 May 2026 | Opening: Sat 16 May, 5-7pm
Packing Room
Abbotsford Convent, 1 Saint Heliers Street, Abbotsford VIC, Australia
Dokola is located on the traditional lands of the Wurundjeri/Woiwurrung people of the Kulin Nation. We pay our respects to Elders both past and present, and recognise and respect their leadership as custodians of this land and as historically important local material innovators and craftpeople.