Alessi Super Star

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RESEARCH BACKGROUND: Kovac's Super Star was selected for exhibition at Melbourne NOW at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV). It featured on the prominent Design Wall, 'Design In Everyday Life,' an exhibition within an exhibition, curated by leading Australian designer Simone LeAmon . The wall presented 40 products by 21 Melbourne design studios. Almost 700 objects made up the display,communicating design's relationship to serial manufacturing. Commissioned by renowned Italian company Alessi and designed in 2008, Kovac's Super Star was conceived as a series of curves with the potential to generate a complex family of receptacles, combining the expression of architecture with the language of design. Melbourne NOW featured 175 exhibits from individuals and groups, with a focus on art, architecture and design. It is the largest show the NGV has mounted. RESEARCH CONTRIBUTION: 'Super Star' explored design possibilities at the intersection of architecture and industrial design through experimental methods and forms. Kovac's collaboration with Alessi examines ways in which non-standard production techniques can be used to create new spatial forms and systems for design, to establish procedures for the design, fabrication and production of objects that resists traditional categories of creative practice and foster a new design sensibility. RESEARCH SIGNIFICANCE: 'Super Star's' inclusion in the prominent Melbourne NOW exhibition signals his contribution to Melbourne's design community and cultural identity. The opening weekend attracted 18,400 visitors and the exhibition received extensive local, national and international media attention. Kovac delivered an invited public floor talk at the NGV in March 2014. The Design Wall received extensive media coverage: The Age (Ross, 3/10/13 and Stephens, undated); The Australian (Westwood, 2/11/13); designboom.com (31/12/13); ABC Arts (Stone, 26/11/13); Canberra Times (video, 1/11/13).