Design X Nature
Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne is both the setting and catalyst for Design X Nature, an outdoor exhibition of artworks exploring how natural systems can inform creative practice, material experimentation and ecological thinking.
As part of Melbourne Fringe, the Gardens’ Australian Drylands Precinct becomes a living gallery shaped by connections between design and scientific research, featuring new works by Courtney Coombs, Cara Johnson, Bethany Kiss, and Soft Meadow Collective.
Historically, major design innovations have drawn inspiration from the natural world. The commissions in Design X Nature were developed through a research lab residency at Melbourne Gardens in 2025, exploring nature-led design in dialogue between artists, designers, and experts from the Gardens across various disciplines.
Expand your experience of the Design X Nature exhibition through a series of walks, talks, and workshops exploring the creative possibilities of the natural world, set among our stunning native flowering meadows.
Welcome the longer evenings of daylight saving with a refreshing drink from the Brunswick Aces Gin Pop-Up on selected dates throughout the exhibition. See the Walks, Talks and Workshops page for dates.
For more information and bookings, visit melbournefringe.com.au.
Presented by Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria in association with Melbourne Fringe and RMIT University.
Design X Nature is made possible thanks to the generous support of Henrietta Flinn and Simon Scott.
About the artists
Protective Measures, Courtney Coombs
Courtney Coombs makes art, writes, and facilitates to make sense of the world and their place in it. Employing queer-centric, anti-spectacular methodologies, they privilege periods of observing, thinking, feeling, learning, and unlearning as much as realising a final form, which often involves reimagining everyday encounters. Their minimally presented liaisons include objects, installations, two-dimensional works, moving images and sound, discourse, dialogue, and community building.
Pastures, Cara Johnson
Cara Johnson’s craft-based works interrogate tensions and narratives connected to the ways land is treated and used through material, intention and invested labour. Her practice is entwined with her rural location, and primarily concerned with traversing the complexities between people and plants.
Peckable Architecture, Bethany Kiss
Bethany Kiss is a designer and researcher whose practice explores the relationship between buildings and wildlife. Her work translates ecological data into architectural propositions, asking how buildings might be designed as deliberate habitats rather than as accidental ad hoc relationships. Her research-based design practice is embedded within her current PhD at the University of Melbourne (School of Science).
Peckable Architecture has an installation in Fed Square during exhibition dates.
Field Furniture, Soft Meadow Collective
The Soft Meadow Collective are multidisciplinary artists Sarah Lynch, Daniella Ruffino, and Adele Daniele, who are interested in plants, pollinators, biodiversity, and urban ecology. Established in 2022, the Collective collaborates with artists, musicians, urban ecologists, geographers, and landscape architects on projects to encourage a connection to nature.
Walks, Talks, Workshops and more
Expand your experience of the Design X Nature exhibition through a series of walks, talks, and workshops.