Collaborative Interior Design Styles at DesignBUILD RAW 2017

Collaborative interior design styles are the main attraction at DesignBUILD RAW - DesignBUILD's revolutionary project, in partnership with the leading architecture and design universities in Australia.

DesignBUILD RAW aims to showcase the burgeoning industry potential of students to none other than top industry professionals. The event opened to rave reviews in Melbourne last year; its Sydney debut was met with even greater critical acclaim during DesignBUILD Expo 2017, last May 3-5 at the International Convention Centre (ICC).

A RAW Take on Collaborative Interior Design Styles
DesignBUILD RAW 2017 welcomed participants from the University of Sydney, the University of New South Wales (UNSW), and the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). Following their 2017 curricula, the students engaged in collaborative interior design styles, competing for the design of the two ICC speaker theatres, the DesignBUILD Incubator Pavilion, and the central bar spaces.

After all the design projects had shared the spotlight, DesignBUILD announced the list of winners. The results saw a unanimous inclination towards sustainability, in which highly recyclable raw materials were harnessed to achieve cutting-edge collaborative interior design styles.

Among the big winners were the delegates from UTS, taking home two awards for the Incubator stand design, and the 3D Installation Sketch. The former design was developed using plywood panels to build the structure of the Incubator stand. Started out as a Master of Architecture summer elective, the Incubator stand design revolves around the innovative method of folding plywood, reminiscent of origami, the Japanese art of paper-folding.

"We were exploring ideas around origami folding and construction," said Paula Vigeant, DesignBUILD spokesperson and subject coordinator at UTS. "There's a lot of interest in origami structures in architecture, because It's got no structural capacity."

The UTS summer elective bore fruit with a cleverly assembled system of internally reinforcing structural columns. The walls of the Incubator stand are flexible, with screw rods and bolted cover elements shored up by triangular inserts. In addition to the high recyclability of plywood, the design project also minimised the use of resources for construction.

"When you fold materials, you're actually doing something that's more materially efficient in design, and also conserving materials . . . [and] energy," explained Vigeant. "It's more environmentally friendly."

The 3D Installation Sketch for the RAW space gave UTS its second award. The design project used recycled cardboard panels as the primary building material.

"Our brief was to just to put together an installation here [RAW space], which would be participatory," said Luke Tipene, a lecturer from the Interior and Spatial Design Department of UTS.

The 3D Installation Sketch was built to engage students and guests into submitting collaborative interior design styles for the RAW space. The resulting design showed that the cardboard panels were cut into triangular units, whereupon zip ties joined them together to establish structural integrity.

"The actual panels themselves are linked together and make their own panelling system so they can be self-supportive," explained Tipene.

For more information on collaborative interior design styles, go to the official website of DesignBUILD at www.designbuildexpo.com.au.