Archinect - News

Tadao Ando's MPavilion extended for another year in Melbourne

2024-04-10T13:26:00-04:00

The Naomi Milgrom Foundation and City of Melbourne have jointly announced they will be extending the run of Tadao Ando’s new MPavilion commission at Queen Victoria Gardens for another full year until March of 2025.

"We’ve been thrilled to see visitors of all ages and from far and wide flock to MPavilion, curious to experience what Tadao Ando, an extraordinary master of design, has created for Melbourne. Being in the pavilion, looking across water and out to the green of the surrounding parklands has an immediate and unique calming effect, a slowing down amidst the fast pace of contemporary life," the foundation’s founder Naomi Milgrom said.

Photo: John Gollings, courtesy of MPavilion.

"The pavilion has seen myriad curated and informal activities this last summer, from pilates and picnics to drawing, photography and more. Engaging in great architecture and design enriches our city and our lives, and this extended partnership with the City of Melbourne means even more of the community...

Tadao Ando's MPavilion opens in Melbourne

2023-11-14T20:00:00-05:00

Tadao Ando’s oasis-like design for the MPavilion 10 has been revealed in Melbourne to coincide with the five-month commission’s grand opening this Thursday.

Photos taken ahead of the opening ceremonies reveal the intimacy of the low-profile structure in the city’s Queen Victoria Gardens, which includes a reflecting pool in homage to traditional Japanese gardens. Enclosed concrete perimeter walls frame an aluminum-clad single-column main structure covered by a 47-foot-wide roof.

Its production creates a sequence that plays on the architect’s career-long fascination with light and darkness. Ando said previously that he considers the design "eternal, not in material or structure but in the memory of a landscape that will continue to live in people’s hearts."

Photo: John Gollings, courtesy of MPavilion.

"It is the expression of human reason and the pursuit of ethereal space. With the circle and square, emptiness is given form. The emptiness, in its silence, lets the light and wind ente...

Tadao Ando reveals oasis-like MPavilion design

2023-05-11T16:18:00-04:00

Tadao Ando’s design for the 10th MPavilion in Melbourne has been revealed, showcasing the architect’s ambition towards placemaking and the social cohesion of memory and his related desire to "find a scene of eternity within the oasis" that is the city’s 12-acre Queen Victoria Gardens.

Ando says the pavilion will be "eternal, not in material or structure, but in the memory of a landscape that will continue to live in people’s hearts."

"To reflect the lively nature of the site, like a blank canvas, I imagined an architecture of emptiness," his statement to the press continues. "Pure geometry outlines the composition of this design. Ancient Egyptians used fundamental geometry to create ordered spaces and structures in the natural world. Geometry formed the foundation of philosophical study in ancient Greece."

Image courtesy of Tadao Ando Architects & Associates

"It is the expression of human reason and the pursuit of ethereal space. With the circle and square, emptiness is given form. T...

SO – IL and Hassell's Melbourne Arts Precinct master plan is moving forward after gaining approval

2022-03-15T18:56:00-04:00

The official go-ahead has been given to the master plan by SO – IL and Hassell for what would be one of Australia’s largest redevelopment schemes in recent memory following a decision late last week by the state of Victoria’s planning minister Richard Wynne.

Popular Australian daily The Age is reporting that the $1.7 billion Melbourne Arts Precinct effort, which has drawn its fair share of detractors from within Melbourne’s arts community, is set to move forward with the plan from the Brooklyn-based firm and its Australian partner that includes a garden pathway and heavily-cantilevered new 60-meter (196-foot) tall contemporary art gallery dubbed the NGVC.

Victoria’s planning council had previously warned of hazards, including possible wind tunnels and the various risks created for pedestrians by the gallery’s five-meter cantilever, which hangs over the abutting Kavanagh Street and Southbank Boulevard. Melbourne city councilor Rohan Leppert called the project “spectacular” but said t...