Cathedral Square proudly hosts PRINCIPLES for Perth Design Week 2024.

A series of outdoor public activities will take place for Perth Design Week, including talks on design related topics, workshops, film screenings, and book readings, will take place at the installation. When there are no events, PRINCIPLES at Cathedral Square is an outdoor public co-working area with a relaxing atmosphere.  

The PRINCIPLES furniture collection by OMA provides furnishings that can be used by anyone, at any time, to best support the needs of the contemporary workplace and institutions – such as universities and libraries.

The collection is composed of more than one hundred elements – in the sizes of S, M, L, and XL and organized into different categories – which can be configured in limitless ways for working in groups or independently. One of the families, the ‘spines’ of the collection, includes straight and curved partition panels that can be joined to form individual pods for private calls and focused work, or semi-secluded nooks for smaller meetings. Another family comprises ring-shaped sofas called the ‘donuts’ and ‘soft islands’ that allow for more informal interaction. The desks and tables have double-layered surfaces for multiple uses such as eating, working, and organizing. The furnishings are fully wired, giving users the flexibility to work anywhere, while soundproof materials are incorporated into their design for elevated acoustic performance. 

Principles is presented by Perth Design Week and hosted by Cathedral Square.

ABOUT PERTH DESIGN WEEK

Perth Design Week is a ‘coalition of the willing’ – a group of people and organisations working together to create this event. The project started as a collaboration, the idea being that there is a broad array of design based organisations with budgets for their own individual annual events. If these organisations rearranged their diaries to hold events in a particular week each year, we have the start of a Perth Design Week.

And that’s exactly what has happened in 2023. The list of participants in 2023 was over 50, with major partners including the Western Australian Museum Boola Bardip, State Buildings, Curtin University, UWA and Central Park Perth – all of which are back on board for PDW 2024.

This year PDW has gone global! collaborating with renowned global architecture practice OMA and Italian based, international furniture brand, UniFor – presenting PRINCIPLES in a highly innovative, interactive and inclusive installation ‘Principles Square’ at Cathedral Square.

With the creation of Perth Design Week, Perth can now take its place among the great cities of the world where interest and value in good design is celebrated with a dedicated public festival. Our city’s new Design Week highlights and acknowledges local design leaders and the fruits of their labour.

It’s an opportunity to recognise our design community is incredibly diverse and comprises people working across all disciplines – architecture, interiors, landscape, planning, fashion, graphic design, service design and product design. It’s about design at all scales but all working to a common goal – to improve how we all live and work.

Visit the Perth Design Week website for more information.

Perth Design Week 2024 is set to be held from Thursday 14 March through to 21 March 2024 at venues across Perth city.

Discover the PRINCIPLES program at Cathedral Square:

Thursday 14 March: 

10:30am – 11:30am: Perth Design Week Rolling Interviews 

5:30pm – 6:30pm: Movie Premiere: Point of Origin – Building A House in Austria

Saturday 16 March: 

10:30am – 12:30pm: Architecture Photography Workshop with Frans Parthesius 

5:00pm – 7:00pm: The Future of Work with OMA and UniFor

Sunday 17 March:

10:30am – 12:30pm: Architecture Photography Workshop with Frans Parthesius

10:30am – 12:00pm: The Suburbs: A Conversation between Sandhurst Retail and Logistics (SRL) and OMA

2:30pm – 5:00pm: Affinities – Expansions Across Art and Architectural Thought Livestream

5:00pm – 6:00pm: Pecha Kucha: Design Student Event 

6:00pm – 7:30pm: Building Civic Architecture in Perth – A Conversation between Government Architects and OMA Australia

7:30pm – 8:30pm: Point of Origin – Building A House in Austria

Monday 18 March: 

10:00am – 11:00am: English Language Group

3:00pm – 4:00pm: Join In: Design Soap Box

Tuesday 19 March:

3:30pm – 4:30pm: Fishbowl Discussions – Making Design Mainstream 

Wednesday 20 March:

10:00am – 11:00am: City of Perth Library – LOTE Storytime in French

5:00pm – 6:00pm: Point of Origin – Building A House in Austria

6:30pm – 8:00pm: Casa Conversations: A Dialogue on the Future of Inclusive Workspaces 

ABOUT OMA

OMA is an international practice operating within the traditional boundaries of architecture and urbanism. AMO, a research and design studio, applies architectural thinking to domains beyond.

OMA is led by eight partners – Rem Koolhaas, Reinier de Graaf, Ellen van Loon, Shohei Shigematsu, Iyad Alsaka, Chris van Duijn, Jason Long, and Managing Partner – Architect David Gianotten – and maintains offices in Rotterdam, New York, Hong Kong and Australia.

OMA-designed buildings currently under construction are the Museo Egizio in Turin, Palais de Justice in Lille, the Hangzhou Prism, the CMG Times Center in Shenzhen, the Bajes Kwartier in Amsterdam, Simone Veil Bridge in Bordeaux, and LANTERN (9301 Kercheval) in Detroit.

OMA’s completed projects include Apollolaan 171 in Amsterdam (2023), Aviva Studios – Factory International (2023), the Buffalo AKG Art Museum (2023), the Taipei Performing Arts Centre (2022), Audrey Irmas Pavilion in Los Angeles (2022), Norra Tornen in Stockholm (2020), Axel Springer Campus in Berlin (2020), Galleria in Gwanggyo (2020), WA Museum Boola Bardip (2020), nhow RAI Hotel in Amsterdam (2020), and Potato Head Studios in Bali (2020).

Earlier buildings include Fondazione Prada in Milan (2018), De Rotterdam (2013), CCTV Headquarters in Beijing (2012), Casa da Música in Porto (2005), and the Seattle Central Library (2004), and The Netherlands Embassy in Berlin (2003).

ABOUT UNIFOR

The commitment to architecture and manufacturing know-how are the founding principles of UniFor’s business strategy. The company’s main interlocutors have always been the architects who design its products and the buildings and environments that contain them.

Since 1969, the profound collaborative relationships that have accompanied every stage of the design and production process, facilitated by constant dialogue, have resulted in series products and custom furnishings capable of meeting the ever-changing needs of contemporary office environments.

UniFor develops furnishing systems that aim to interpret, through simple solutions, the complexity of the workplace.