2016 Australian Interior Design Awards: Installation Design

Jury comment

My Zinc Bed/Blood Bank is a beautiful design, both conceptually and physically. This project explores the notion of two theatre productions sharing a set and the sustainable outcomes and versatility that result. The designers have devised a clever, sculptural solution that seamlessly integrates people, technology and theatre. Lighting was evolved to become the hero, applied as a sculptural backdrop that can morph to create different settings, environments and expressions.

Design statement

My Zinc Bed/Blood Bank is a set design for the Ensemble Theatre’s 2015 season. Minimal in style, the set is finely calibrated to suit two separate productions. A seemingly simple composition of levels and ramps allowed complex scenes to play out, graced by planes of coloured light.

Theatre budgets demand resourceful choices and clever design thinking to maxi- mize the imaginative potential of sets. For this project, the designer and theatre company determined that it was advant-ageous to combine resources to create one design shared by two productions. The briefs, each comprising of a play script (My Zinc Bed by David Hare and new Australian play Blood Bank by Christopher Harley), meant the design was a hybrid of two productions’ requirements. The success of the project is due largely to each director’s willingness to adapt to working on an abstract set that did not provide literal information about time and place.

The Award for Installation Design is supported by Bespoke. The Australian Interior Design Awards are presented by the Design Institute of Australia and Artichoke magazine. For more images of this project, see the Australian Interior Design Awards gallery.