In mid-May, Mondoluce hosted David Trubridge at our South Yarra showroom for Melbourne Design Week 2026. Over ten days, the showroom played host to the latest projects, a live sculptural build, and an evening talk on regenerative design that challenged the room to think differently about how we design and build.
Here’s a look back at what unfolded.
Bilang: Built in Public, Open to Everyone
The centrepiece of the week was Bilang, a three-metre sculptural installation created in collaboration with Murrup Biik artists Chris Joy and Aunty Kim Wandin (Wurundjeri Woiwurrung). The name comes from the Woi-wurrung word for string bag, a traditional woven form that became the starting point for something entirely new.
David and his helper Hugh assembled the work row by row over the opening days of Design Week, right there in the showroom. It was an open process, unhurried and visible from the street. And people noticed. Complete strangers wandered in to watch, ask questions, and take in the work as it took shape. Some came back three days running.
The work remains on display at our South Yarra showroom for the next couple of weeks, and it's well worth seeing in person.
– Watch the story of Bilang video
Latest Projects: Manta and Dusk
The exhibition also featured Manta, a sculptural pendant shown for the first time in Australia. Inspired by the manta ray, the collection carries a purpose beyond the aesthetic: a portion of profits will support Manta Watch, a conservation organisation working to protect the species. David was direct about his intent:
“What I’m trying to do with Manta is tell the story of an endangered species that we’re trying to help protect.”
It's a continuation of something that has always defined his practice. The work doesn't just reference nature as a visual motif. It asks you to pay attention to what's disappearing. Manta is coming soon to the David Trubridge collection.
Also on display was Dusk, David's first portable lamp, born from a collaboration with Pure Salt, a conservation-focused charter company operating in Fiordland's Tamatea/Dusky Sound. Where Manta draws attention to the grand and the threatened, Dusk celebrates something quieter:
“It tells the story of the little things, not the big gigantic scenery, the waterfalls and the mountains, but the little plants that grow along the trees hanging out over the water at the edge.These are equally essential parts of the ecology.”
Both pieces felt at home in the showroom alongside David’s established collections, but they also signalled a clear direction: work that carries a story, asks a question, and connects the person who lives with it to something larger.
Dusk is available to order now, directly from David Trubridge.
– Watch the story of Dusk video
Think Like a Tree: An Evening on Regenerative Design
On Thursday 21 May, David presented Think Like a Tree, an evening talk on regenerative design at our South Yarra showroom. It was one of the most thought-provoking evenings we've hosted.
David questioned the assumptions embedded in modernist design thinking, including the industry's reliance on materials like concrete. He made the case for biophilic design as a fundamentally different approach: “enabling, not imposing an ego, a will, an idea from above.” Where conventional design thinking is top-down and designer-led, biophilic design, as David described it, is “allowing something to grow and helping it grow naturally from the earth upwards. It's community-led. It's not designer-led.”
His sharpest challenge was reserved for the concept of sustainability itself:
“Sustainable design hasn't worked. It's effectively sustaining the unsustainable. We've dropped so low in what we're doing to help the environment that we're now actually at a lower level than we need to be. It's not just a matter of sustaining that, we've got to get back up.”
He also threw down the challenging statement that Modernist Design is just another form of colonialism. In the same way as colonialism did, Modernism imposes a homogenised and corporate set of criteria that marginalise the local, the crafted, even the female.
It was an important and thoughtful challenge to how the design industry frames sustainability, delivered with a clear eye on what comes next rather than what's been done wrong. Mondoluce GM Fionnuala McCarthy described the talk as powerful and thought-provoking. Showroom Manager Morena Ferronato said David's speech was felt by the audience: engaging, personal, and deeply resonant.
Why Melbourne
When we asked David what keeps bringing him back to Melbourne Design Week, his answer was characteristically generous:
“I really like Melbourne Design Week because it’s small scale. Lots of small-scale things happening. People in the fabric of the city developing ideas and working really hard and putting their stuff on show around the city.”
It's a reminder of what makes this week special, and what made hosting David feel so natural. The best Design Week moments aren't the biggest. They're the ones where a stranger walks in off the street to watch an artist work, or a room full of people who've never met find themselves deep in conversation about the things they care about.
We’re grateful to David Trubridge and to everyone who visited, watched, listened, and came back for more. Bilang is still on display at our South Yarra showroom if you’d like to see it for yourself.
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