A site-specific installation of Sarah Mair’s Polyphase furniture in dialogue with architecture and film space Qality. This installation is part of Melbourne Design Week 2022.

Project Poly X Qality creates a dialogue between furniture design, architecture and film though a site-specific installation and process-led film. In spatial response to Qality, Polyphase challenges the perceptions of visitors as to the object/subject relationship between material and form, furniture and space, visitor and object, object and film.

Polyphase addresses radical forms of material sustainability through shifting the form, process and materiality in the collection, production and creation of objects. In the transformation of Expanded Polystyrene (EPS), these works challenge the aesthetic and tactile sensibility of the material and the everyday practices of recycling as moments of abundance and creative potential in design.

Situated within Qality, Polyphase challenges our perceptions of waste, the oft form-driven process of design, and the perceptual field of encountering such unidentifiable forms. This installation will awaken your senses and question associations between waste, beauty and everyday objects, and formalise the possibilities of material-oriented, sustainability-driven furniture.

The screening of a process-led film by Qality will explore the phenomenal and palpable qualities of production that further embolden the tactile practice.

In addition to the exhibit, a workshop will be held offering the chance to engage with the process of making Polyphase. The event is a result of an ongoing collection of discussions and research into waste materials first conceived during the Experimental Design Lab (ExLab) studio at The Melbourne School of Design led by Jas Johnston.