Dr Trent Jansen | Photography by Romello Pereira
Australian designer Trent Jansen has spent the past two decades exploring how cultural values are embedded into objects. His retrospective at Melbourne Design Week 2025 brings this ongoing inquiry of ‘design anthropology’ into sharp focus.
Trent Jansen, Briggs Family Tea Service, from the Broached Colonial collection (2011) | Photography by Scottie Cameron. Courtesy of Useful Objects, Melbourne.
For twenty years, Dr Trent Jansen has worked at the intersection of storytelling and material culture. As part of Melbourne Design Week 2025, the Thirroul-based (Dharawal land) designer will present his catalogue of work at Useful Objects in Collingwood.
The exhibition, titled Two Decades of Design Anthropology, draws on Jansen’s evolving approach to what he now terms “design anthropology”, a process of deliberately embedding cultural values into the pieces he designs. “I wasn’t calling it that two decades ago,” he notes. “It was conceptual design, then narrative design … I was trying to describe what I was doing, but none of the terms quite fit. Eventually, through my PhD and reading Jules Prown’s theories on material culture, I realised it was the same thinking, just backwards.”
This intent-driven approach—where meaning is built into an object from the outset—now informs all aspects of Jansen’s process. Whether working solo or collaboratively, he begins with extensive reading and research, packing his mind with knowledge until connections form organically. By going deep on a particular subject, Jansen pushes through the Dunning-Kruger effect, peeling back layer after layer. “I find that if I just try to design from what’s in my head, I go around in circles. It’s not until I start feeding the idea with information that anything worthwhile emerges,” he says.
Tanya Singer and Trent Jansen, Manta Pilti ‘Dry Sand Low Chair’ (2023) | Photography by Fiona Susanto. Courtesy of Useful Objects, Melbourne.
Tanya Singer and Trent Jansen, Manta Pilti ‘Dry Sand Credenza’ (2023) | Photography by Fiona Susanto. Courtesy of Useful Objects, Melbourne.
It’s a process that takes time, and Jansen readily admits he doesn’t always work well to tight deadlines. “It’s alchemy. I can’t control it. I can try to push an idea out, but it’s not going to be the best one.”
Some of his most powerful work has come through collaboration, particularly with First Nations artists and communities. His first experience working in this space came from Lou Weis at Broached Commissions with a brief that asked designers to explore the Australian colonial period. “I was immediately aware of the politics,” Jansen says, adding that, “Not doing something that addressed the First Nations experience would have felt like a bigger failure than doing it badly.”
He travelled to Tasmania to research a family said to be one of the first documented cross-cultural families in the colony. Along the way, he met Palawa artist Vicki West, who became a key collaborator on the Briggs Family Tea Service project. “She taught me about bull kelp as a material and its cultural importance.”
Since then, Jansen has developed many projects that allow him to continue working with First Nations collaborators, including Johnny Nargoodah, Tanya Singer and Errol Evans. Through the deepening of these relationships, Jansen continues to learn and draw inspiration from their cultural and creative exchanges.
Artist Johnny Nargoodah and Trent Jansen with their Ngumu Janka Warnti (All Made from Rubbish) Chair (2020) | Photography by Romello Pereira
The beauty of seeing the oeuvre of a life’s work means certain threads start to emerge. One that carries as a throughline is Jansen’s deep interest in adaptive reuse and the repurposing of materials. From his early Sign Stools (2004), to curating Transformative Repair at the Australian Design Centre (2022) and Jam Factory (2024), to the Ngumu Janka Warnti (All Made from Rubbish) collection, done in collaboration with Nargoodah—the pattern of repurposing repeats. “When I reuse materials, it isn’t just about sustainability. I’m drawn to things, materials, and artefacts with recognisable histories, they carry baggage—a second layer of meaning.”
Over time Jansen’s work has also become more intricate, with complexity seemingly simplified, albeit through exquisite craftsmanship and pedantism. Now his pieces often focus on texture and idiosyncratic forms, which he describes as “looking like they were made by nature”—chaotic at first glance but meticulously planned to the millimetre. “There’s a tension I love in making something look like it wasn’t designed at all.”
Jansen has decades of explorations ahead. And in fact, he is already preparing for future exhibitions in Adelaide and Design Miami. “I’ve still got a long way to go,” he says. “But this moment, looking back, it’s a chance to see where it all began.”
It’s a rare opportunity to see 20 years of experimentation, collaboration and cultural enquiry in one room, all by one of Australia’s most thoughtful furniture designers, but it’s certainly one worth experiencing.
Trent Jansen, ‘Sign Stool’ (2004) | Photography by Alex Kershaw. Courtesy of Useful Objects, Melbourne.