Urbis Designday goes off the grid

Urbis Designday launched with a brunch at The Steel Works in Mt Eden to open its 5th year of pairing the best in NZ design showrooms with fashion design on the famous city-wide tours of style; this year taking place on Saturday 20th March.

Pictured left: Xanthe White, gardening goddess, and Lynne Howard from Cavit & Co.

But this year it's a little different.

For 2010 they're keeping it fresh and broadening the design input to other creatives including multimedia creators, architects, furniture designers, landscape and fashion designers, all working in partnership with 13 of Auckland’s leading showrooms.  

Another first this year is the introduction of a design brief - ‘Off the Grid’ so we look forward to seing how the showroom-creatives marriages interpret this theme.

Students are where the future of design is at, so it is appropriate that an exciting addition is the HP Future Designer, where AUT’s top design graduates from Graphic, Fashion and Spatial design faculties will work with HP in a series of installations at the Simon James showroom.

Ludo Campbell-Reid and Tara Pradhan from Auckland City Council



This year’s collaborators are:

- Cite / DUB module & World

- design denmark / Penny Vernon

- Häfele / Patrick Reynolds

- Poggenpohl / OH.NO.SUMO

- Matisse / Brendon Reid & Automation Associates

- Matisse Contract Interiors / Brogen Averill & Automation Associates

- Inovo / Alexandra Owen

- Kohler / Zambesi

- Essenze / NZ Design Collective (Chris Metcalfe & Te Rongo Kirkwood, plus David Trubridge)

- Cavit & Co / Xanthe White Design

- Studio Italia / Dulux & newimproved

- AUT / HP Future Designers at Simon James

- RTA Studio / Audi & Urbis at Ironbank.

Below: Francis Hooper (WORLD), Nicole Stock (Urbis), Katrina McKenzie (Cite) and Mike Hodgson (DUB Module).

Representatives from the showrooms and creative practitioners have already started planning and some of the exciting ideas Designday guests can expect to see include; Häfele NZ Ltd and Patrick Reynolds creating an interpretation of the nine muses that have inspired Artists and Poets throughout time; the teams from Studio Italia and Dulux & newimproved will be basing their installation on Michelangelo’s David taking a colourful tiki tour around New Zealand exploring classical Italian art and design and the diverse colours of our country.

Cite and DUB module will be travelling to the core of the design furniture concept by creating a futuristic white office space that will come alive with sound and projected images; and the representatives from Cavit & Co and Xanthe White are creating two installations around the idea of ‘time stands still’ with one of them being a 1950s New York apartment setting overtaken by nature.

Nicole Stock (Urbis) Neville & Liz Findlay (Zambesi) and Rob Watson (Kohler.)

All Designday guests must register online to attend and for a $20 fee will receive passes for free transport and access to all participating showrooms. Guests are then taken on a leisurely tour of the 13 showrooms from 10am till 5pm on Designday Saturday, 20th March. There are refreshments at almost every stop and shuttles to take everyone around.  

Registration for Urbis Designday is essential. For more information or to purchase passes please visit: www.urbismagazine.com/designday 

Guests who register for Designday before 01 March will go into the draw to win a fabulous VIP Audi experience for four people, complete with a champagne breakfast on the day and exclusive Designday tour accompanied by a personal chauffeur.