An unassuming white box designed to unlock solar power for apartment dwellers has taken out the top honor at this year's Australian Good Design awards.
Melbourne-based Allume Energy won the 2026 Australian Good Design award of the year for its SolShare system. The product functions similarly to a traffic controller for solar energy, enabling power generated by a shared rooftop system to be split among multiple apartments without requiring individual inverters, multiple installations, or complicated wiring. In addition to the top accolade, the system also received the award for sustainability.
Dr. Brandon Gien, chair of Good Design Australia, described SolShare as an amazing piece of technology and a beautifully designed solution to a complex problem. Millions of people reside in apartments, yet many have historically faced limited access to the benefits of rooftop solar. SolShare represents a clever Australian design innovation addressing that challenge practically, and it is already delivering meaningful benefits at a significant scale.
Gien noted that the awards recognize design that extends beyond superficial appearances, requiring products to be both functional and aesthetically pleasing, with innovation and societal impact serving as key evaluation criteria. Established in 1958, the event stands as one of the world's oldest design honors, with past top recipients including the Cochlear hearing implant, Marc Newson's economy-class seats for the Qantas A380, the Flow Hive beehive design, and James Cameron's Deepsea Challenger submersible.
This year, SolShare emerged as the highest-ranked entry among more than 1,000 submissions from both Australia and international applicants. The awards were presented during a black-tie ceremony at ICC Sydney, recognizing excellence across 13 disciplines spanning products, communication, digital solutions, and policy design over more than 30 categories.
Other notable winners included Icons, a collection of animal-inspired climbable public art landmarks designed by Industrial by Nature, which shared the best in discipline award for product design alongside Allume. A ceremonial gathering space at Melbourne's City Square, created by Greenshoot Consulting with Wurundjeri elders, received the built environment award. Meanwhile, the Sydney Children’s Hospital placemaking and wayfinding project by Frost*collective won the communication design discipline for its empathetic approach to easing navigation stress through nature-inspired artwork.
The next-gen designer category for creators under 30 recognized Xavier Earls for Bush Cradle, a modular habitat system for native Australian animals utilizing interchangeable pieces to form nest boxes or shelters. Several other winners focused on sustainability, including Finnish firm FabPatch for a rub-on fabric repair system, alongside Australian innovations such as No Wrap, a reusable pallet-securing alternative to single-use plastic, and Holy Carp, a compostable soy-sauce fish packaging alternative by studio Heliograf.
Gien concluded that the winning entries demonstrated how good design can bring joy to daily life while actively protecting the environment, reinforcing that design touches virtually every aspect of modern existence from household products to public spaces and digital services.