Last week Melbourne Design Week officially kicked off its 11-day program at Revival Projects’ Collingwood hub, a zero footprint co-working space for designers and the only inner-city timber mill Australia has left. Source: ArtsHub
Revival Projects founder, Robbie Neville was the recipient of the Melbourne Design Week Award in 2022 and is showcasing a new project with poetic depth and tangible impact as part of this year’s program.
Building on its ethos of using salvaged material and reusing demolition waste, Revival Projects’ 100 Circles involves 100 timber urns made out of several large cypress macrocarpa (or Monterey cypress) trees from Box Hill Cemetery. In their original location, the roots of the trees were beginning to threaten nearby graves.
Each urn is made with no glue or mechanical fixing and contains the seed of the golden wattle tree. When buried, the urn and cremated ashes will decompose and a new tree will sprout – thus, the circle of life will continue.
Mr Neville tells ArtsHub, “The roots [of the trees] were literally sharing the soil with the departed, and so we saw it as a sacred resource. I describe it as a physical embodiment of the intersection between the dissolution of life and new life.
“The golden wattle tree is actually the first tree that grows after bushfires; it’s naturally resilient to ash.”
At the opening of the 100 Circles exhibition, over half of the urns had been purchased, with each buyer leaving a note of reflection. Some had purchased an urn for a recently deceased loved one, while others recounted the previous experience of planting a tree, and the impact it had had on their lives. Each sale will be donated to Indigenous groups that manage forests after fires.
“‘Hopefully the initiative provides a really meaningful process that makes it a little bit easier to rationalise and make sense of the grief and emotions you go through when you lose someone or something that you love,” Mr Neville said.
The Collingwood timber mill was originally slated for demolition this year, but its redevelopment has since been pushed back to the end of 2025 and Revival Projects will occupy its space until then. Revival is currently collaborating with the developers on how resources from the site can be used in the 2025 development.
Revival Projects is also deeply involved in the major development of the Melbourne Arts Precinct, taking part in urban tree recovery and making use of demolition materials. Melbourne Arts Precinct Corporation Director and CEO Katrina Sedgwick has previously mentioned that the project has the goal to recycle and reuse up to 95% of existing building materials.
This is the 17th year of the Melbourne Design Week Award partnership with Mercedes-Benz, which announced at the media launch that it will extend its support of the Award for another three years until 2027.
Melbourne Design Week is on until 2 June.
