Melbourne Design Week is Australia’s largest annual design event presenting innovative and engaging projects. Now in its eighth year, Melbourne Design Week, held 23 May – 2 June 2024, celebrates the diversity and excellence of Australian design and architecture.

The 2024 edition brings into focus the use of energy, ethics, and ecology to encourage positive change, reimagine existing systems, and offer innovative design solutions to complex global challenges. 

Second Place, a landscape architecture research collective based in Naarm (Melbourne), is celebrating with an Urban Landscape Design Cake Competition.

The event will explore climate change, the biodiversity crisis, and built environment practice in Australian cities. In response to the Ecology theme of Melbourne Design Week, a selection of Melbourne-based landscape architecture studios – including OCULUS – have been invited to select a site currently under development in the Melbourne CBD and re-envision it as parkland through the edible medium of cake.

An exhibition of cake designs will be held on Saturday 25 May, along with a live judging by a panel of built environment experts including Ana Abram (McGregor Coxall – Biourbanism Lab), Katrina Simon (RMIT University) and Azin Emampour (AILA VIC, Spiire); and a panel discussion around designing for biodiversity and non-human ecologies in the Melbourne CBD with speakers including City of Melbourne’s Jocelyn Chiew.

OCULUS Senior Landscape Architect Virginia Overell is a member of Second Place.

Melbourne Design Week is an initiative of the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria and delivered by the NGV. This is a free event, but bookings are required. Please visit the event page for more information.