Open Nature will explore the critical relationship between people and natural environments, with an exciting, thoughtful, and engaging series of ticketed walks, talks, tours and events as part of Melbourne Design Week 2023, 18 – 26 May.
Recognising the urgent need to address the climate crisis, Open Nature explores a growing movement toward innovative ecologically responsive, ‘more than human’ design practices.
This year’s Open Nature program is focused on the health and ecology of the Yarra River and its waterways. From Bulleen through to Hobsons Bay, audiences will wind their way along the river — uncovering the ecological, historical and cultural legacies that have shaped Melbourne’s waterways. Through creative workshops, architect-led walking tours, eco-aware design discussions, photography and audio field recording tours, audiences will gain insights into Indigenous knowledge, learn about new sustainable creative practices, and develop a more complex understanding of how we should care for our waterways.
Open House Melbourne Executive Director and Chief Curator Tania Davidge says: “This year’s Open Nature program offers so many opportunities to connect with the Birrarung and discover how Melbourne’s intricate network of waterways sustain us and the broader ecology of the city. I can’t think of a more engaging way to explore Melbourne during Melbourne Design Week.”
Open Nature brings community, creatives, researchers and designers together to discuss the importance of pursuing inclusive design practises that prioritise the relationship between humans and the natural environment as critical for a thriving future.
Program highlights include:
Acoustic Ecologies—listening walk and field recording
20 May, 9-10am. $59. Bookings required. Presented in partnership with Heide Museum of Modern Art, 7 Templestowe Rd, Bulleen
Spend a day at Heide Museum for Acoustic Ecologies with educator and one of Australia’s best-known nature sound recordists Andrew Skeoch for a peaceful listening walk and field recording activity. Part sonic-walk, part workshop, this aural exploration of the Birrarung encourages participants to partake in sound-walking as an active creative practice. Here, collective listening facilitates deep connection with the natural environment. The workshop also covers acoustic ecology as a form of sound design, and participants will be guided in taking field recordings. Bring a phone or other recording devices.
Yaluk Langa ecology workshop
20 May, 12-1pm. $59. Bookings required. Heide Museum of Modern Art, 7 Templestowe Rd, Bulleen
Yaluk Langa ecology workshop presents an introduction to the vegetation and ecology of the Birrarung. Luke Murchie, Head Gardener at Heide will lead a tour along the Yaluk Langa site at Heide, revealing the process behind revegetating the land along the banks of the Birrarung. Participants will learn about the site’s history and how the Yaluk Langa project is contributing. Presented in partnership with Heide Museum of Modern Art.
Urban Wilds: the inner city as Botanic Garden?
May 20, 5-6pm. $29. Bookings required. Kaleide Theatre, RMIT, 360 Swanston St, Melbourne.
Urban Wilds will explore the tensions in the Botanic Gardens as a landscape archetype, arising from a particular mode of (Western) thought and how a reframing of this might facilitate new forms of urban wildness; drawing from place, offering habitat and refuge and creating new systems of living. The program includes a keynote presentation on May 20, followed by site-specific talks on May 21 to engender further discussion on the themes discussed in the Urban Wilds keynote presentation.
A keynote presentation will be delivered by Jock Gilbert, Program Manager of Bachelor Architectural Design and Co-director of Yulendj Weelam Design Research Lab RMIT University; Emma Cutting, Founder and Chief Doer at the Heart Gardening Project and Melbourne Pollinator Corridor; and Professor Tim Entwisle, Director and Chief Executive of Royal Botanic Garden Victoria.
May 21, 11am-4pm. Sessions are $39 each. Bookings can be made for individual sessions, or for the whole series $110. Experience the counterpoints between these distributed sites to deepen your understanding of the themes discussed in the keynote:
- Consider the tensions inherent in the Botanic Garden as a landscape archetype at the Oak Lawn at the Royal Botanic Gardens with Tim Entwisle. 11am-12pm.
- Heart Gardening Project’s Emma Cutting explores wrinkles in the suburban fabric of the Melbourne Pollinator Corridor. South Melbourne BEE Gardens. 1-2pm.
- Hear more about the industrial ecology of Westgate Park with Jock Gilbert. Westgate Park, Todd Road Port Melbourne. 3-4pm.
Bio-blitz photography and walking tour
21 May, 10am-11.30am and 12.30-2pm. $50 adults. $25 children. Pound Bend, Warrandyte.
Join Yarra River Keeper Charlotte Sterrett, on an exploration and guided walking tour of the Yarra, Birrarung River at Pound Bend, Warrandyte. This tour offers a chance to connect to this beautiful and resilient living entity and grow your awareness and appreciation of the Birrarung’s biodiversity. Participants will photograph the river’s flora and fauna, stopping along the way to absorb the cultural and ecological significance of the area.
Yarra Riverkeeper, Charlotte Sterrett brings her many talents working with diverse stakeholders to advocate for the Yarra/Birrarung to be healthy, protected, and loved. Part of her motivation for being the Yarra Riverkeeper is to encourage people to be more connected to the river and respect it as a living entity with its own rights.
A vision for Hobsons Bay Wetlands Centre
21 May, 1-2.30pm and 3.30-5pm. $39. Bookings required. HD Graham Reserve, Altona Meadows
Hobsons Bay Wetlands Centre is a proposed purpose-built facility set within the unique, natural habitat of Melbourne’s western suburbs amidst a transforming industrial landscape. Grimshaw Principal and project lead Eduard Ross will guide a walk and talk at HD Graham Reserve near the proposed site. Hear about the regenerative, climate resilient and biophilic design principles that underpin the vision to create an innovative, sustainability-focused, interactive wetlands centre that inspires people to connect with nature and care for Country.
Eduard Ross is highly experienced in leading the design of large and complex projects across a range of typologies and sectors, with a focus on leisure and tourism, sport, aviation, and master planning.
Stroll the City with the Greenline team
24 May 12.30-2pm. Free. 107 Victoria Harbour Promenade, Docklands.
City of Melbourne Greenline Project team and Urban Ecologists provide an opportunity to walk along the river edge to learn more about this city-shaping project and its recently installed floating wetlands trial.
Tributary Encounters
25 May, 3-5.30pm, $40. Bookings required. Flemington Bridge Railway Station, North Melbourne
Audiences are invited into encounters with the material, ecological, historical and cultural legacies that shape Naarm/Melbourne’s waterways. Guided by the Tributary Project team and guest guides, this walk will provide the audience with a range of ways to connect with waterways through deep listening, physical movement and an introduction to the creative processes used by the Tributary team to deepen site knowledge.
Artists included in the project are:
Geoff Robinson is an artist who creates situated projects that engage listening as a process for unravelling the durational layers of place. Robinson’s practice develops comparative relationships between multiple situations and places as a way of understanding deep time, current, and future relations to place.
Ying-Lan Dann is an architect, artist and Interior Design lecturer. She explores temporal processes to generate awareness of environmental flux and emergence. She is an RMIT School of Architecture and Urban Design PhD candidate.
Saskia Schut’s research addresses climate uncertainty and extreme Planetary distress through intimacy, relationality and embodiment. She investigates the ecological, historical and cultural legacies that are continuing to shape the urban environment.
Benjamin Woods is an artist who practises with training in sculpture and sound. He explores how embodied relationships with sonic objects can generate attention to relational and ecological connections. Woods has been exhibiting and performing for over ten years and recently completed a PhD project at Monash University focusing on fragile ecologies of practice.
The full program has been announced and tickets are available via: openhousemelbourne.org/melbourne/whats-on/open-nature-2023/
Open Nature is presented by Open House Melbourne as part of Melbourne Design Week 2023, an initiative of the Victorian Government in collaboration with the NGV.
