2025 Festival Creative Director
Simone Bliss is the creative director of SBLA Studio and panel member of the recently implemented City of Melbourne Design Review Panel. Prior to establishing the SBLA, Simone worked as a senior landscape architect with Taylor Cullity Lethlean (TCL, Melbourne) and then Playstreet design studio in Hobart. She has eighteen years experience designing and project managing nationally and internationally award-winning projects. Simone has a creative vision with the ability to materialise colorful conceptual ideas into functional spaces. She is an active member in the discussion of green field development, high and mid density housing and Melbourne’s housing shortage. She has led a series of multi-residential housing projects that are undertaking alternative models to business as usual. She has worked closely with a number of developers and architects who are pushing the urban density and middle ground housing outcomes.