Four decades of fearless design.
RMIT University and Melbourne Fringe proudly present a special anniversary showcase celebrating forty years of the Design Fringe program and its impact on emerging and experimental design practice in Melbourne.
From 1986 to 2024, Fringe Furniture – later renamed Design Fringe – invited designers, makers and fabricators at all career stages and from all creative backgrounds, to exhibit new objects that challenged conventional approaches to design.
Every year, designers from Melbourne and greater Victoria rallied to show what was new and radical in the world of design: furniture that exemplified craft excellence, prototypes of would-be commercialised objects, speculative critical manifestos, and one-off pieces celebrating design as an adventurous conceptual and artistic outlet.
Design Fringe pushed the boundaries of material, form and function, encouraging makers to question what design is, who it’s for, and how it can shape new ways of thinking about the world.
As RMIT University and Melbourne Fringe work together to consider the future of the Design Fringe program, we’re looking back on the legacy of Fringe Furniture and Design Fringe to think about what’s next.
From radical experiments to iconic objects from some of Melbourne’s leading designers, this anniversary showcase brings together a selection of works, zines and photographs originally shown in past Design Fringe exhibitions, in context with RMIT as a site for experimental and interdisciplinary design practice.
Curators
Dr Malte Wagenfeld and Dr Judith Glover, RMIT School of Design
Works by
Ash Allen, Polly Bastow, Kate Bissett-Johnson, Drasko Boljevic, Chan Hung-Hin, Casey Chong, Annette Cock, David Durance, Ilan El, Mila Faranov, Marta Figueiredo, Bruce Filley, Matty Fuller, Andrew Gibbs, Judith Glover, James Dutton, Richard Greenacre, Anton Hassel, Dale Hardiman, Kaspian Kan, Marie Lefebvre, Adam Markowitz, Kevin O'Connor, Marc Pascal, Britt Salt, Tony Stuart, Sally Thomas, Malte Wagenfeld, and more.
This exhibition is presented by RMIT University's College of Design and Social Context, in partnership with Melbourne Fringe Festival.
Image: Fringe Furniture 2013, Image by Tamaryn Goodyear.
