Why Tall Poppy, and why it mattered

On Sunday 24 May, as part of Melbourne Design Week 2026, Fibonacci Director Michael Karakolis joined four of Australia's most considered design practitioners for a conversation called Why Tall Poppy?, a panel held inside the Tall Poppy exhibition at Kelli Lundberg Art, Moorooduc, and moderated by Tiffany Jade.

The name was never chosen so much as recognised. It came from an older conversation about the pull designers of an earlier generation felt offshore, toward the ecologies that simply didn't exist here yet. The artisans, the engineers, the precision of places like Milan, where a wall-mounted light could behave like architecture and a furniture piece could move like a fine instrument. For a young designer with serious ideas, staying had felt less like a choice than a limitation

The premise of the panel was that something has changed — not entirely, and not as fast as it should have, but enough to make the question worth asking again.

Alongside Gordon Tait (Made by Tait), Mardi Doherty (Studio Doherty), Jean-Pierre Biasol (Biasol Studio), and Leisa Wharington (Glassblower and Co-Founder, The Studio & Co.), the conversation moved across conditions: what it takes to build a serious design practice in Australia, where the gaps remain, and what becomes possible when the support actually exists.

Michael spoke from the position he knows well: the material side of the design industry, the supply chain, the slow work of removing friction so that designers can specify with confidence. But the line he kept returning to was broader than product. What Australian design needs, he argued, is a return to being design-led, and a handing back of stewardship over the built environment to the people trained to hold it. Not as nostalgia, but as a precondition for quality.

The panel touched on territory that doesn't always surface in public design conversations: the lack of IP protection for furniture makers, the blurred lines between interior stylists and registered interior designers, the "Australian washing" of products assembled here from entirely offshore components, the quiet erosion that happens when lead times become a reason to respecify rather than a problem to solve. These aren't abstract industry grievances. They're the daily friction that either grinds a practice down or sharpens it.

What the room held, and what the exhibition surrounding it made visible, was evidence that staying and building seriously here is possible. Fifteen practices gathered in one space, each doing exactly that.

Fibonacci was proud to be a founding partner of the Tall Poppy exhibition. But more than that, we were glad to be in the room for a conversation that took the conditions of making in Australia seriously. Not as complaint, and not as celebration, but as something worth examining clearly.