The Design Files Awards 2019
The results are in — let's see who took out the final awards for the first-ever TDF Design Awards.
Words: Emma-Kate Wilson
STYLING & ART DIRECTION |Behind the scenes from RONE Empire. Photo - Tyrone Wright. Styling - Carly Spooner.
STYLING & ART DIRECTION | Tyrone ‘Rone’ Wright and Carly Spooner, RONE Empire. Photo - Tyrone Wright. Styling - Carly Spooner.
At Deakin Edge in Melbourne on Thursday 19 September, The Design Files announced the first winners for the inaugural TDF Design Awards. The talented winners also got to take home their own piece of art — a bespoke hand-blown glass trophy Amanda Dziedzic.
Vokes & Peters won the Residential Architecture Award with Subiaco House, which worked within strict zoning rules to create an open and expansive house. All while blending in on the street thanks to terracotta tiles on the roof. Yet, the winner of the Interior Design Award, Matt Woods Design's minimalist, concrete bunker: Perfect Storm, challenges convention with a Sydney apartment that rejects the inner-city warehouse aesthetics.
HANDCRAFTED | Nicolette Johnson, Dark Tower. Photo - Nicolette Johnson.
HANDCRAFTED | Nicolette Johnson, Dark Tower. Photo - Nicolette Johnson.
The Enchanted Garden, from Clapham Landscape Architecture, embraces the surrounding natural environment at the Yarra Bend development in Alphington, bringing together the diverse community. They won the Landscape Architecture Award thanks to this 'invitational gesture'.
RONE Empire, by artist Tyrone 'Rone' Wright and interior stylist Carly Spooner, also has a social impact on the community as an art installation, transforming a 1920s Art Deco building that remembers the former hotel's glitzy past. The team took out two awards on the 19 September — the Styling and Art Direction Award and the Collaboration Award.
LANDSCAPE DESIGN | Clapham Landscape Architecture, The Enchanted Garden. Photo - Alex Reinders.
“Entries were assessed on their creativity, functionality, originality, innovation and visionary thinking with bonus consideration awarded to pro bono and community focused projects and projects completed on an unusually tight budget.”
TEXTILE DESIGN | Georgina Whigham, Woven Bag Series. Photo - Victoria Zschommler. Styling - Nat Turnbull.
FURNITURE DESIGN | Koskela, LEARN. Photo - Courtesy of Koskela.
SUSTAINABLE DESIGN | Seljak Brand, Closed Loop Merino Blanket. Photo - Jorge Serra.
The winners of the Furniture and Floral Design — Koskela's Learn and Melanie Stapleton and Katie Marks' Flowering Now — continue the community theme. Learn provides an interactive learning environment for school children. While Flowering Now sees collaborative learning for floristry knowledge that defies tradition.
Georgina Whigham's Woven Bag Series and Seljak Brand's Closed Loop Merino Blanket won the Textile and Sustainable Design Awards, respectively, for woven bags and blankets that celebrate Australian traditional craftsmanship and reject a throwaway culture. While Zachary Hanna's Trapeze (Lighting Design Award) and Nicolette Johnson's Dark Tower (Handcrafted Award), both created individual pieces of design that inspire an artistic aesthetic. From minimalist 20th-century lighting to conflictingly futuristic yet baroque-esque ceramic sculpture.
EMERGING DESIGNER | Hawthorn House. Photo - Ben Hosking.
FLORAL DESIGN | Melanie Stapleton & Katie Marks, Flowering Now. Photo - Cassandra Tzortzoglou.
LIGHTING DESIGN | Zachary Hanna, Trapeze. Photo - Sarah Spilsbury.
INTERIOR DESIGN | Matt Woods, Perfect Storm. Photo - Kat Lu. Styling - Madeline McFarlane.
RESIDENTIAL ARCHITECTURE | Vokes & Peters, Subiaco House. Photo - Christopher Frederick Jones.
The final award of the night went to Edition Office, established in 2016 by architects Aaron Roberts and Kim Brigland, who won the Emerging Designer Award. It's impressive to consider their practice has only been going for two years, as they have made waves in the industry with projects like the curved concrete Hawthorn House and the upcoming NGV Architectural Commission with Yhonnie Scarce, In Absences.