The Design Files' fifth Open House to celebrate ideal Aussie home

The best of Australian art and design will be showcased at The Design Files’ fifth Open House this month.

The event is back by popular demand following a two-year hiatus while Lucy Feagins, founder of the popular design blog and Domain magazine columnist, scaled back her work to care for her new baby.

The pop-up will be held at Melbourne’s Collingwood Arts Precinct (site of the former Collingwood TAFE Campus) from November 23-26 in an expansive warehouse space transformed to reflect the event’s theme of the ideal Australian home.

The Open House, which brings together the works of more than 60 home-grown creatives, will incorporate a living and dining area, kitchen, laundry, main bedroom, kids’ area, and lush courtyard created by landscape architect Phillip Withers. Throughout the interior, Feagins has created a warm, lively colour scheme of blush, terracotta, grey and burgundy using shades from Dulux’s 2018 Colour Forecast.

The “home” will be decorated with Australian designed and made furniture, homewares and lighting by high-profile names such as Ross Gardam, Henry Wilson and Mark Douglass. Furniture retailer Cult’s new Australian-designed collection NAU will also be on display.

In addition to local furniture and homewares, the event will feature a range of works from talented Australian artists including painters Fred Fowler and Caroline Walls and brass worker Anna Varendorff. All of the items on display will be available for purchase on the spot.

Feagins, a former film and television set designer who started the TDF blog as a sideline a decade ago, says the Open House has come a long way since its first year in 2011.

“At that time – I guess it was before pop-up shops were such a prevalent thing – I wanted it to be more like an installation, a physical manifestation of everything TDF was about,” says Feagins, whose business now employs six people.

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“I asked, ‘If TDF was a physical space, what would it look like?’ I decided it would look like a home. It was our first foray into doing anything in the real world – it was a big deal for us to come out from behind our computer screens – and it has morphed and grown over time.”

In a first for the event, this year’s Open House will include a speakers’ series running alongside the pop-up.

“It’s a platform for Australian art and design,” Feagins explains.

“The speaker series is what really rounds it out and makes it more about community and supporting makers in a tangible way.”

The custom-designed kitchen, installed in partnership with Cantilever Interiors and Miele appliances, is another new addition.

Cult founder and chief executive Richard Munao says the Australian design community possesses a unique offering that needs to be nurtured and encouraged.

“There are a lot of designers here in Australia who really can mix it with anywhere in the world,” he says.

“As a nation, we’ve always been quite competitive, and you can feel that in the designers – they’re very humble, but they’re striving to do something that no one has ever done before.

“The beauty for Australian designers is that we don’t have the legacy that the Danes have, with Arne Jacobsen, or the Italians, with the likes of Joe Colombo.

“Imagine being a designer in Denmark, with all the beautiful designs that have been around for many years. You would always be designing in the shadows. I think, in many ways, we’re a lot freer.”