Photo - Amelia Stanwix for The Design Files.

A One-Of-A-Kind Installation Recreating Melbourne As A Self-Sufficient City

‘A New Normal’ is a visionary project that tasks 15 prominent local architects and designers to re-design Melbourne’s existing infrastructure with renewable options.

Writer
Sasha Gattermayr
26th of March 2021

Re-organising our cities for the impacts of climate change is a mammoth and pressing task, but the private sector is making some headway, and inviting the public in to take a look.

Finding Infinity is a sustainability-focused consulting agency working with people, businesses and elected bodies to design practical solutions to the problems we are already facing.

As part of Melbourne Design Week, Finding Infinity has launched ‘A New Normal’ – an ambitious and complex project challenging 15 of the country’s leading architecture and design firms to redesign the city’s infrastructure to make it a completely self-sufficient location by 2030.

Each designer is assigned an essential component of the overall project, such as transitioning the LaTrobe Valley into a solar and wind energy region, creating a closed-loop water system and ending landfill. From there, their responses are fleshed out and designed from top to toe, creating a viable and functional alternative.

The ideas presented range from innovative to inspirational! They include passive digestors transforming organic waste from the Queen Victoria Markets to energy that powers the stalls; covered rooftop venues that are created from frames of solar panels throughout the CBD; rain water run-off from the MCG caught and stored under the bleachers where it is treated to become potable drinking water; and an electric vehicle ‘pit-stop’ converts petrol-run cars to battery-power and charges up the engines of existing electric cars.

Each designer has built a small-scale prototype to represent their broader solution design, which have been installed on a rooftop in the centre of the CBD as an immersive exhibition open to the public for most of Melbourne Design Week. Additionally, Finding Infinity will host panel talks with the designers involved and extra specialists in sustainability fields, which will be live-streamed online.

Hear representatives from some of the country’s most celebrated architecture firms including Clare Cousins, John Wardle and Fender Katsalidis discuss retrofitting Melbourne’s existing buildings with sustainable solutions; listen to designers from Grimshaw, Foolscap, Hassell and Greenaway Architects debate the future of the city’s transport systems; join representatives of Openwork, NMBW, 3000 Acres and Development Victoria nut out solutions to the city’s water, energy and food consumption in the years to come; and hear a conversation between WOWOWA, Six Degrees Architects, Dreamer, Edition Office and Sustainability Victoria that breaks downs the principles of a circular economy that applies them to future designs.

This epic creation could be our sustainable future, people. Make sure you check it out!

Access to the streamed panel events can be booked via the Melbourne Design Week website here. Read more detail about ‘A New Normal’ here

A New Normal
Friday, 26th March – Saturday, April 3rd 2021
Free

130 Little Collins Street
Melbourne, 3000

Opening Hours:
Tuesday – Saturday 10am – 4pm
Saturday March 27th 6pm – 10pm
Saturday April 3rd 6pm – 10pm
Closed Sunday 29th + Monday 30th

Supported by Melbourne Design Week

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