Make is a design store in a city that considers itself pretty design literate. The store is a bit of a Tardis. It looks like a small Victorian terrace from the front but it spreads 240 square metres over two levels and half a dozen rooms. The fundamental criteria for what Make sells is that it’s well designed.
We opened in 2003 and it now seems strange to me that something like Make didn’t exist in Carlton until it did. I spent a lot of my childhood here (we lived on the same block as the store back in the late 70s). There’s been a lot of change since then. The Royal Exhibition Building now has a buddy in the Melbourne Museum and the footpaths on Lygon Street are wider reducing the scope for drag racing but it still maintains its Carlton-ness.
Carlton’s proximity to Melbourne University has a significant influence on its character as does its Italian and Jewish roots. It doesn’t have as many tattoos as Fitzroy but it’s less self-conscious than the People’s Republic of Brunswick and the locals have more teeth than those in Collingwood.
It’s Carlton. It’s home.
Instinctive is probably the right word as there’s no real recipe for how the process works. Some things just hit you and they can hit you for numerous different reasons depending on the object. I have a design background and I’ve been doing this for 23 years so I’d like to think I’m pretty good at it when it comes to selecting products but I still make my fair share of howlers. Sometimes you miss things completely and you only realise how interesting they are much later. Other times you buy things and then look at them six months later and wonder if someone had slipped you a psychedelic on the day you ordered it.
Pretty much everything and everyone!
I spent a day with Alberto Alessi in Italy a few years back (how’s that for a name drop?). Despite the fact that I’ve been selling Alessi for a couple of decades I’d always been a little confused by the company’s criteria when it came to product selection. Anyway, Alberto wrote a book about Alessi called The Dream Factory that goes into this in depth and what I realised when I read it was that Alberto’s superpower was in realizing that his company was a facilitator for a broad range of design ideas and movements rather than being a dictator of any particular style. His job was to allow others to provide a plurality of objects rather than to tell us what was “cool”. And when I read this, I realised that that was actually what I’d been doing instinctively with Make and also why I got extremely frustrated when I was in architecture school and people kept insisting on why their way was best.
I don’t want to walk down a city street and see it dominated by a single architectural style or idea. I love the plurality and diversity of cities that grow and deteriorate over time. I don’t have to love every product in my store and there are some that I’d never take home but with everything I buy I can at least understand why some else might love it.
Carlton’s right next to Melbourne’s CBD so I spend a lot of time floating between the two. I don’t really stay in hotels here but if I did I’d give the new Melbourne Place in Russell Street a go. It was designed by Kennedy Nolan who have been customers at Make since we first opened (we get a lot of architects!).
As for wandering? Everywhere.
Big streets, little streets, back lanes, arcades, down by the river. No need to plan it. The joy of Melbourne is in discovering it. There’s no shortage of food in Carlton but my regular haunt is Bomba in Lonsdale St in the city whether it’s in the restaurant downstairs or the rooftop bar up top. Possibly the best croquettes in the world. And I’m including San Sebastian in that!
Got to make a living and there are worse ways…LOL