An entire continent is shaping its future around design

There are appointments that do not simply fill a vacancy, but open up new horizons. The appointment of Simone LeAmon as Director of the Design Institute of Australia (DIA) falls into this category: it signals not just a change in leadership, but a shift in ambition. After more than ten years at the prestigious NGV – the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne – where she helped transform design into an institutional concern, not decorative but structural, the ever-energetic LeAmon takes on a forward-looking role with a clear promise: to bring design back to the centre of the national debate. Simone LeAmon has long rejected disciplinary compartmentalisation. Designer, curator, educator and cultural strategist, her work has crossed materials, economies, politics and communities, guided by a porous understanding of design as a practice that expands rather than defines boundaries. This is what makes her appointment a statement in its own right. Founded in 1939, the DIA – Australia’s oldest institution dedicated to design – is placing its trust in a figure who has already demonstrated how culture can operate as a civic lever rather than a specialist niche.

During her years at the NGV, LeAmon developed a curatorial programme that shifted design from the margins to the centre. More than 25 exhibitions, over 400 acquisitions, and platforms such as Melbourne Design Week and Melbourne Design Fair – now among the most significant infrastructures for Australian design in terms of public reach, economic impact and discursive weight. Particularly distinctive was her ability to read design as a productive, social and industrial ecosystem, rather than merely as a language. The tone of her appointment is not administrative, but explicitly political. “My vision is to place design at the centre of the national debate and to position the DIA at the forefront of this process, so that it can become a catalyst for a culture that values and invests in design as an essential element of Australia’s future,” LeAmon explains. For her, the institution is not a centralised body but a living system, a network. And the way she articulates this is telling—direct, almost operational: “Together with our members, partners and communities, we will extend the reach of design, amplify its impact by telling the stories of what designers do, and build the next chapter of the profession.”

Simone LeAmon

Today, the DIA presents itself as a national point of reference for Australia’s design community—a broad and transversal professional base spanning industrial, digital, graphic and architectural practices. LeAmon does not treat this landscape as context; she takes it as a point of departure. Her career, after all, has prepared her for a systemic vision. She has moved between museums, design practice, academia and industry, guided above all by a deep commitment to her work. Simone LeAmon is a hybrid figure, with a biography shaped more by crossings than by boundaries, as her trajectory shows—from early work in jewellery and product design to major commissions and public programmes at the NGV. This posture, systemic rather than specialist, emerges clearly in her own words: “Design is the bridge between the world we have and the world we want.”

A premise that positions design not as decoration of reality, but as an infrastructure of transition—a bridge, precisely. And it is hard to imagine a more useful definition for a country that must decide how it wants to imagine itself in the coming decades: sustainable, equitable, competitive, capable of investing in design as a driver of prosperity rather than as just another creative sector. With LeAmon, the DIA’s task is not to protect design, but to restore its broad public function. Not to defend a specific category, but to demonstrate its potential and its vision. If the institution truly follows this direction, design will cease to be a topic and become a way of reading the country—and its future.

Opening image: Courtesy Unsplash