The Design Depot and the circuit: the 2026 exhibitors
In 2026 we gave exhibiting two homes. One was fixed: the Design Depot at Shed 10 on Queen’s Wharf, open across the ticketed days from 8 to 10 March, where the exhibition sat alongside the Design Objects Store and Launchpad. The other was distributed: a design circuit of more than 30 stops across the city, showrooms and public art displays among them, open for the week, and together they turned the city into a route you could follow. Between them, the two covered the full range of what People + Place means for the people who make and sell design.
The Design Depot at Shed 10
The Depot was our exhibition heart. It housed the Design Objects Store, a retail space for design pieces, and Launchpad, the platform for newer work, under one roof at Shed 10. Holding the exhibition inside the same building as the Design Days and the conference meant a ticketholder could move from a talk to a stand to a shelf and a cafe, without leaving the wharf, which was our whole argument for a single hub.
The circuit: more than 30 stops
Out in the city, the design circuit did the walking. Showrooms across Parnell, Grey Lynn and Ponsonby, Newmarket, Avondale, Point Chevalier, New Lynn, the North Shore and Britomart opened their doors, many of them trade spaces letting the public in for the week. Zenith Interiors and Crestline anchored Parnell, with Residium’s design and building centre nearby on The Strand. Blum opened its revamped Avondale showroom around the half-height REVEGO. Artedomus spread across two Point Chevalier and New Lynn spaces, from natural stone and timber to outdoor and al fresco.
The circuit read like a tour of the country’s material culture. Kayu Studio in Grey Lynn, Nero Tapware, Stoke Fireplace Studio and Studio Italia in the Newmarket cluster, 159Design in Grey Lynn with its textiles and rugs, Coco Republic and Muuto for furniture, Ambitec for colour and craft, Acme CupCo in Britomart, Sample Workshop on the Shore, and Lyzadie and the Rainbow Machine in the CBD. Each stop set its own scene, but the effect was collective: a city’s worth of design open at once.
Two models, one point
The Depot and the circuit answered the same question two ways. The Depot concentrated the newest work in one place, the Store and Launchpad included, for the audience who had bought a pass and wanted it dense. The circuit spread the festival across the map and kept it free to wander, for the audience who wanted to follow their own line through the city. Together they made exhibiting with us less a single hall and more a way of reading Auckland as a design place.
