Marlo Lyda is a designer-maker, curator, and educator based on Gadigal Country, Sydney. A graduate of Design Academy Eindhoven, her practice is guided by hands-on material experimentation, producing sculptural yet functional furniture, lighting, and objects from unconventional resources. Her work reframes discarded materials - marble offcuts, invasive timbers, salvaged metals and textiles - revealing the stories embedded in what already exists and celebrating material irregularity as creative potential.

In 2025, Lyda was selected for the NGV Rigg Design Prize, presenting her textile based lighting collection KIN — a continuation of her ongoing Toile lamp series first released at Workshop: Low Key with Fiona Lynch Office during Melbourne Design Week 2025. In the same year, she was awarded the George Alexander Fellowship, enabling extended research in Europe into sustainable approaches to stone reuse.

Prior to this, Turning (Camphor) was developed during her NSW Design (Early Career) Fellowship with Create NSW and the Powerhouse Museum, later shown in the MATTERS exhibition at Villa Alba and featured in AFR Magazine’s Top Australian Designs of 2024. In 2024, Lyda also presented a solo exhibition at Useful Objects Gallery (Melbourne), bringing together her core collections Turning (Camphor), Remnants, and Fragments.

Her work has been exhibited internationally at Dutch Design Week, and nationally at the Powerhouse Museum, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Design Week, Sydney Design Week, Craft Victoria, Design Tasmania, and Oigall Gallery.

Beyond her studio practice, Lyda is the founder of MATTERS, a three-part exhibition series exploring time, intention, and process in design. Its 2024 edition at Villa Alba became a key satellite venue of Melbourne Design Week, noted for its collaborative spirit and process-led ethos.