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Koning Eizenberg returns to its roots with the new Student Pavilion for the University of Melbourne

2024-07-03T18:33:00-04:00

A new higher ed project in Australia from Koning Eizenberg for the University of Melbourne has opened, bringing together student input on diversity, inclusion, and gender equity with the need for communal space. The design reference points pay credence to the institution’s progressive culture both past and future.

Image: Peter Bennetts

The firm's 27,000-square-foot Student Pavilion was inaugurated this past academic year and is meant to serve as a hub for commuter students. It is set within a newly created student precinct whose aim is to reinstate a "pre-colonial landscape" with respect and reconciliation to the Indigenous culture of the land's traditional owners.

Image: Peter Bennetts

The building's main circulation route is placed prominently on the exterior, adding a sense of exuberance while allowing for better socializing use of its projecting balconies and a series of mixed-use "informal" interior spaces by students.

Image: Peter Bennetts

From the outside, an exposed concrete s...

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...

Art performance at Tadao Ando's concrete MPavilion features grayscale gelato

2024-01-26T17:26:00-05:00

An exciting and tasty art performance has taken shape at the Tadao Ando-designed MPavilion in Melbourne, Australia.

It comes in the form of grayscale gelato, created by Brazilian artist João Loureiro in collaboration with local creamery Piccolina Gelateria. The treat is available in six different flavors, each a different shade of gray ranging from light gray to nearly black. No flavors are labeled, stimulating a unique and surprising sensory experience with pavilion visitors during the Australian summer months.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Piccolina Gelateria (@piccolinagelateria)

The gelato colors mirror the pavilion’s aesthetic, which comprises enclosed concrete perimeter walls and an aluminum-clad, single-column main structure and roof.

Related: Tadao Ando's MPavilion opens in Melbourne. Image: Beatrice Eckermann

As stated by MPavilion, "...this work questions our sense of comfort and forces us to rethink associations that have been rooted in u...

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...

Melbourne considers the future potential of high-rise parking areas as urban farms

2023-08-17T12:17:00-04:00

Urban farms and communal spaces are among the ideas for repurposing car park floors in Melbourne’s skyscrapers in the future, when it is predicted that residents will rely more on driverless and shared electric cars. The architects of Melbourne’s tallest building, Australia 108, have created designs envisioning the transformation of the building’s 10 levels of car parking into space for a vertical farm, beehives, water collection and storage, pet care, podcast studios, co-working and education.

Downtown Melbourne's potential future scenario of widely-available self-driving cars has developers rethinking millions of square feet worth of parking garages, and vertical farms are seen as a solution (along with housing, retail, and dining options). An amendment to its planning rules that would require new parking structure designs to include their retrofitting consideration has been proposed that would add an extra layer to the pedestrian-friendly ambit that mirrors policies in Oslo, Barcelona, and other global cities.

According to The Age, a 2019 City Council survey suggests an overwhelming majority (95%) of Melbourne residents support the idea of reducing vehicle traffic in Southbank by 2030.

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...

Tadao Ando is selected as the designer of the 10th MPavilion in Australia

2023-03-15T12:35:00-04:00

The Australian Naomi Milgrom Foundation has announced former Pritzker winner Tadao Ando will design the 10th MPavilion commission in Melbourne’s Queen Victoria Gardens.

Ando is now the seventh architect selected for the prestigious five-month-long commission, which began in 2014 and has since hosted over 3,500 free events for more than 900,000 guests since its inception.

The Chichu Art Museum / Naoshima by Tadao Ando Architects &Associates. Photo by Mitsuo Matsuoka. Courtesy Tadao Ando Architect & Associates

21_21 DESIGN SIGHT. Photo by Mitsuo Matsuoka, courtesy Tadao Ando Architect & Associates

The Pavilion will become his first-ever realized design within Australia and follows last year’s installation by the Thai studio all(zone), which will be on view until April 6th before being reinstalled elsewhere in the city.

Milgrom added that she has long admired how the architect’s work “responds to and incorporates the particularity of a place into his design, and his belief that archite...

all(zone)'s 2022 MPavilion opens to the public featuring an 'ingenious canopy'

2022-12-09T10:52:00-05:00

The 2022 MPavilion has officially opened in Melbourne, Australia. Designed by Thailand-based practice all(zone), the scheme is defined by an “ingenious canopy” comprising three fabric, tensile layers.

The outermost layer of the pavilion’s canopy is built from fishing nets, creating what the team calls a “stunning tactile texture.” The middle layer is formed of an STFE membrane; a weatherproof, anti-glare, transparent material ten times lighter than glass. Finally, the bottom layer is composed of a “waffle” of colored fabric made of 49 individual sections, designed to “move with the breeze and filter light, evoking the feeling of gently resting under trees.”

Photo credit: John Gollings

“Working on the MPavilion project with so many talented individuals has been an incredible journey,” said all(zone) design director Rachaporn Choochuey. “MPavilion is special because even though it’s called a temporary pavilion, it’s actually even more complex than a building. The engineering and manuf...

‘Temple of Boom’ adorns Parthenon replica with optical illusions and floral motifs

2022-11-25T14:14:00-05:00

The National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) in Melbourne, Australia has unveiled a new installation that celebrates and explores the role of The Parthenon in global cultures. Titled Temple of Boom, and designed by Melbourne-based architects Adam Newman and Kelvin Tsang, the installation sees a one-third scale replica of the famous Greek site adorned with floral motifs, optical illusions, and other designs.

Photo credit: Sean Fennessy

Situated in the NGV Garden, the scheme will host a gradually-changing set of large-scale artworks and murals painted by local artists in three phases between November 2022 and August 2023. The ever-changing artwork within the installation is intended to invite audiences to “consider the effect of time on all architecture.”

Photo credit: Sean Fennessy

The artwork series will begin with floral motifs and optical illusions by artists Drez, Manda Lane, and David Lee Pereira. Themes within the artwork range from bold murals sitting at the intersection of abstract ...

WilkinsonEyre's next office project promises a range of amenities in downtown Melbourne

2022-08-22T13:20:00-04:00

WilkinsonEyre has released updated renderings of their winning conceptual design for an office project in Melbourne’s central business district called 600 Collins.

Commissioned by Hines, the 180-meter-tall (590-foot) development will comprise a total of 60,000 square feet of “state-of-the-art collaborative office spaces” developed with the help of Architectus to “transform Melbourne into a dynamic and stimulating place to work and meet, and from where you can enjoy the best of the city.”

Image courtesy WilkinsonEyre

According to WilkinsonEyre's project announcement: “The building will deliver amenity provisions on levels not yet seen in Melbourne, including premium F&B offerings, rooftop terraces, conference and collaboration zones, wellness center, and open green spaces.” The building will be situated on a 70-meter-wide (229-foot) plot along Collins Street and be connected to nearby transit nodes Spencer Street and Southern Cross Station to offer itself to workers as one of Melbourn...

all(zone) will push new material boundaries in the ninth MPavilion

2022-07-12T12:51:00-04:00

Two months after being named the designer of the prestigious annual MPavilion commission in Melbourne, Australia, Thailand-based practice all(zone) has revealed an experimental concept featuring a mixture of materials and forms they claim are previously unseen in the country's architectural history.

The ninth edition of the pavilion will be displayed prominently in Melbourne's historic Queen Victoria Gardens and query audiences to “think more deeply about different ways of using materials in a sustainable future,” according to a new project announcement.

Image courtesy Naomi Milgrom Foundation.

By incorporating layers of colorful netting and a waterproof mesh membrane produced by the French manufacturer Serge Ferrari, the pavilion’s presence expands on the commission’s legacy of producing cultural incubators that form the basis for critical exchange in the marketplace of ideas. AECOM and the specialist engineering consultancy TENSYS are now working with all(zone) on a construction pr...

Thailand's all(zone) will create the 2022 MPavilion

2022-05-20T13:56:00-04:00

Innovative Thai practice all(zone) has been named the winner of Australia’s coveted annual MPavilion commission, now in its ninth iteration coming out of a two-year pandemic hiatus. The Bangkok-based studio will reveal its design for Melbourne's Queen Victoria Gardens site in July in advance of a public opening slated for November 17th.

The Naomi Milgrom Foundation, which manages the commission, commended the “playful” firm for having a “commitment to designing built environments where people can feel at home in the world,” adding that co-founder Rachaporn Choochuey’s direction “hold[s] people at the heart of their designs, viewing the spaces they are creating not just as physical architecture but as platforms for people to cheerfully convene, converse, and celebrate.”

all(zone)'s MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Image courtesy The Naomi Milgrom Foundation.

The Aussie answer to the UK’s yearly Serpentine Pavillion commission has seen past contributions from Gle...

A children's mental health facility in Melbourne designed for a new health care typology

2022-03-29T14:58:00-04:00

Kerstin Thompson Architects and Bloxas have “invented” a new health care typology in their design for a children’s mental health facility in Melbourne’s north. The $7.3 million Statewide Child and Family Centre in Macleod will provide mental health services for children aged up to 11 who have experienced negative or traumatic events.

According to Kerstin Thompson and Bloxas principal Anthony Clarke, their design is based on the innovative care model developed by clinicians at Melbourne’s Austin Health. The main challenge for the architects was creating both a residential atmosphere and environment where children felt they have instrumentality and choice. They also wanted to break down the dichotomous patient-clinical dynamic of the setting. The team, thus, explored a number of different types of children’s spaces, such as childcare centers, children's libraries, and Maggie's Centers, which provide support for cancer patients.

Specific features in this new type of facility include the separation of therapy-focused areas from other spaces reserved for other activities, such as play areas, for the purpose of ridding confusion between positive and negative spatial association. Transition zones were also added, allowing individual decision-making to occur. In addition, garden spaces are present in all of the key spa...

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...

OMA to design Wollert Neighborhood Center in Australian suburb near Melbourne

2020-03-23T16:10:00-04:00

OMA was commissioned by Australian retail developer Sandhurst Retail to design the mixed-use Wollert Neighborhood Center in the suburb of Wollert, which is about 25 kilometers (about 15.5 miles) north of Melbourne's Central Business District and is one of the fastest growing regions in the state of Victoria. So far, the practice has released only a few renderings of their scheme.

Concept. Image courtesy of OMA.

The 9,000m2 Center will combine retail and community spaces. A shaded courtyard with an amphitheater will be used for curated community events and daily activities, while the accessible roof makes room for sports, education, and potential urban agriculture and energy-saving initiatives.

Image courtesy of OMA.

Amenity spaces, childcare facilities, and wellness-focused retail spaces are spatially organized into vertical “stripes”. Along with the courtyard's landscape design, this spatial configuration was inspired by the product barcodes used throughout the...

Glenn Murcutt-designed MPavilion opens in Melbourne

2019-11-13T11:43:00-05:00

In celebration of his 50-year-long career, Australia's Pritzker Prize-winning architect consecrates the achievement with the opening of this year's MPavilion. The structure embraces Murcutt's fundamental approach to architecture, touching the ground lightly while thoughtfully considering the climatic characteristics of the site.

Photos by John Gollings

The MPavilion manifests itself as a flexible space, a "true pavilion," in the words of the architect, capturing the historical essence of pavilions as light and temporary buildings, at their core, tent structures. During the design process, Murcutt recalled a trip he had taken to Mexico, to the Yaxchilán ruins. A light aircraft carried the architect and his companions to their destination. During a lunch break, the group had a picnic in the shade provided by the wing of the aircraft:

"After lunch, I put my rucksack against the aircraft’s undercarriage and laid down, and there above me was the beautiful wing, lined with aircraft fabric...

MAD proposes mixed-use tower topped with a cantilevered “cloud” for downtown Melbourne

2018-07-27T15:52:00-04:00

MAD Architects is one of six architecture firms competing to design the “Southbank by Beulah” tower in the heart of downtown Melbourne. Located at City Road and Southbank Boulevard, the skyscraper must include a mixed-use program of more than 220,000 square meters. The other competing teams are BIG, Coop Himmelb(l)au, MVRDV, OMA, and UNStudio.

For their proposal, MAD Architects looked to Melbourne's historic parks and natural local terrain. With a building area of 225,238 square-meters, their concept is a single, 360-meter-tall skyscraper of “organic” forms resembling a mountain, tree, and most interestingly, a cantilevered cloud structure at the top. The design “establishes open connections between the interior and exterior spaces in the form of large terraces, gardens, and public art zones,” MAD says.

Image courtesy of MAD Architects.

The podium level of the tower features a “mount...

Carme Pinós designs an origami-inspired MPavilion for Melbourne

2018-07-02T14:00:00-04:00

Earlier this year, Barcelona-based architect Carme Pinós was selected as the designer for the 2018 MPavilion, and now we've also received first renderings of the origami-like temporary structure in Melbourne's Queen Victoria Gardens.

Rendering. Image courtesy of MPavilion.

"The design for MPavilion 2018 is an open geometric configuration assembled in two distinct halves supported by a central steel portal frame," reads the project description. "Two surfaces of timber latticework intersect with each other to form the pavilion’s roof. An altered topography forms three mounds that incorporate seating, allowing a multitude of community-focused experiences: dynamic, spontaneous and collective. Pinós’s design has inspired MPavilion’s program themes which include: building communities, fostering inclusive cities, women in leadership, visual languages: fashion and architecture, regional contexts, and landscape and nature."

Rendering. Image courtesy of MPavilion.

"Like an origami folding, two...

HASSELL, Rogers Stirk Harbour, Weston Williamson design five new Melbourne metro stations

2018-05-31T15:54:00-04:00

Melbourne has consistently been ranked the world's #1 most livable city (often sharing the top spot with rival Vienna), and city planners hope to strengthen this position with a new metro tunnel set to open in 2025.

Five new stations, along with bicycle facilities, new parks, open spaces, and public plazas, will dot the tunnel line and boast architectural design that is the result of a collaboration between Australian architects HASSELL and UK firms Rogers Stirk Harbour and Weston Williamson.

The new stations are:

North Melbourne Station

North Melbourne Station

Project description: "North Melbourne Station has an impressive large-scale brick arched entrance to reflect the area’s industrial heritage and skylights to enable natural light to filter down on the platforms and concourse."

Parkville Station

Parkville Station

Project description: "In Parkville, a glass feature roof at the Grattan Street entrance provides passengers visiting this world c...

Draped in a fritted glass “curtain”, the Sage Hotel in Melbourne by ACME

2018-04-24T18:56:00-04:00

Located in the affluent Melbourne suburb of Ringwood along Maroondah Highway, the Sage Hotel is the next phase of ACME's ongoing redevelopment of the Eastland mixed-use town center. The center first opened in 2015.

The Sage Hotel is a simple volume whose structure is constrained by existing columns and beams. It consists of 120 hotel rooms over six floors, which are enveloped in a white fritted glass facade.

Photo: Michael Gazzola.

Designed with a curtain-like appearance, the facade's fritted pattern helps limit its solar gain. Additionally, it offers views — and provides external privacy — for the hotel rooms.

The facade's draped effect was created by using two different fabric pattern templates, ACME describes. “The vertical folds and the perforations suggest lightness, and an abstract sense of movement.” At night, the building is illuminated with filtered waves of light coming from the hotel rooms.

Photo: Michael Gazzola.

Photo: Micha...

OMA’s MPavilion 2017 moves to new permanent home at Monash University

2018-03-06T14:49:00-05:00

A long summer season with well over 100,000 visitors and 477 free events over 133 days recently wrapped up for the OMA-designed MPavilion 2017 in Melbourne.

The structure will now commence a new, more permanent life after it has been announced that the pavilion will move from its temporary site at the Queen Victoria Gardens to a new home at Monash University in Clayton, a Melbourne suburb.

Photo: John Gollings. Image courtesy of MPavilion.

Conceptualized by Rem Koolhaas and David Gianotten, this is the fourth MPavilion in a series of six to be gifted to the City of Melbourne by Australian philanthropist Naomi Milgrom.

Previous pavilions designed by Sean Godsell, Amanda Levete of AL_A, and Bijoy Jain of Studio Mumbai have found permanent homes at the Hellenic Museums, in Docklands, and in Melbourne Zoo.

Photo: Timothy Burgess. Image courtesy of MPavilion.

"We are pleased that OMA’s MPavilion 2017 will be relocated to one of Melbourne’s universities; places of knowledge and debate," s...

The 2018 MPavilion to be designed by award-winning Spanish architect Carme Pinós

2018-02-12T13:36:00-05:00

Announced this morning, the 2018 MPavilion, arriving in spring of this year, will be designed by the award-winning Carme Pinós. Now in its fifth iteration, the MPavilion is Australia's answer to the U.K's Serpentine Pavilion. An initiative of the Naomi Milgrom Foundation, the design event commissions a leading international architect to erect a new temporary pavilion in Melbourne’s historic Queen Victoria Gardens every year. Past participating architects include Rem Koolhaas & David Gianotten of OMA, Bijoy Jain, Amanda Levete, and Sean Godsell.

The Spanish architect responsible for this year's forthcoming pavilion is internationally celebrated for her humanistic approach to designs ranging from cultural centers, educational institutions and public housing to office towers, urban landscapes and furniture design. Based in Barcelona, Pinós leads her eponymous architectural firm which she founded in 1991 after earning international recognition for her work with Enric Miralles. Signific...

Australians outraged over plans for an Apple store at Federation Square in Melbourne

2018-01-05T14:39:00-05:00

Announced on Wednesday, the two-level glass-walled pavilion was unveiled with a promise from Apple that the planned project "increases public space and provides a daily program of activity to inspire and educate the community." But it's this element of public space that has people a little concerned.

Residents of Melbourne are angered by Apple's plans to locate its new flagship store at Federation Square, a public center commonly used to house gatherings, protests, sports screening, concerts and Council-organized events. The site is also home to the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, the National Gallery of Victoria's Ian Potter Centre, the headquarters for public broadcaster SBS, and the Yarra Building—the latter of which will be destroyed to make room for the store.

Federation Square is a civic center and cultural precinct in the city of Melbourne.

The Yarra Building, a large, deconstructivist structure, houses the Koorie Heritage Trust, an Aboriginal arts and cultural organization that will be displaced by the decision. Apple has promised to foot the bill for the building's demolition and the Trust has plans to move into a larger space also within Federation Square. However, the Yarra building's quartz-like design is in keeping with the deconstructivist character of the ...

Robots designed my building: Zaha Hadid Architects employ algorithm to generate ideal facade for new Melbourne residential tower

2017-09-26T16:17:00-04:00

Zaha Hadid Architects just unveiled designs for the new 19-story Mayfair Residential Tower in Melbourne, Australia sporting the firm's trademark parametrically generated curves. According to ZHA's statement, various algorithms were at work to design a wavy facade that adapts to a host of different apartment layouts and also to minimize the number of unique facade panels needed in order to bring down costs.

Read on for renderings and a project description from the architects.

Rendering: VA

"Located within the established streetscape of St Kilda Road, the design enables residents to make full advantage of its excellent location within Melbourne. The fluid forms of the façade define large balconies for each apartment and spectacular views of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Port Phillip Bay, Albert Park and skyline of the Central Business District."

Rendering: VA

"For the seventh consecutive year, Melbourne has been listed as the ‘world’s most liveable city’. The design translates the many at...

Melbourne named world’s most liveable city for seventh consecutive year

2017-08-18T18:38:00-04:00

Melbourne, Australia has been ranked as the most “liveable” city in the world for the seventh consecutive year by the Economist Intelligence Unit. The EIU’s benchmark annual report titled “The Global Liveability Report 2017,” ranks 140 cities in order of best living conditions. Melbourne’s 97.5 score is down to perfect assessments in health care, education, and infrastructure, as well as hitting over 95 in stability, and culture and environment.

As in previous years, the top 10 list is mostly comprised of major cities in Australia and Canada, while Vienna — once again — barely misses the first spot by 0.1 percentage points overall. Auckland, Helsinki, and Hamburg manage to claim some coveted spots at the top for their respective countries.

The world's top cities for liveability in 2017 are:

Melbourne, Australia
Vienna, Austria
Vancouver, Canada
Toronto, Canada
Calgary, Canada
Adelaide, Australia
Perth, Australia
Auckland, New Zealand
Helsinki, Finland
Hamburg, Germany

OMA's design for 2017 Australia's MPavilion is revealed

2017-06-19T09:00:00-04:00

MPavilion is an Australian architectural commission and design event that annually erects a new temporary pavilion, designed by a leading international architect, in Melbourne’s historic Queen Victoria Gardens.
This year's structure, designed by OMA, is inspired by ancient amphitheaters. Blurring the lines between the inside and outside – and between audience and performer, OMA's pavilion creates a flexible civic space that can function as a stage, auditorium or even a playground.

Image courtesy OMA

Echoing the ideals of amphitheater typology, the pavilion comprises static and dynamic elements that allow for multiple configurations.

Image courtesy OMA

"The pavilion’s ground plan is shaped by two grand stands; one
fixed, the other movable, which together determine the setup of the performance space. The larger static grand stand is excavated from the surrounding landscape and embedded in 12 different species of indigenous plants, giving a sense of the Australian setting. The smaller gra...

schmidt hammer lassen's State Library Victoria 2020 redesign

2017-03-31T19:43:00-04:00

It's been almost a year since schmidt hammer lassen and Architectus' team won the competition to redevelop the State Library Victoria in Melbourne, Australia's oldest and busiest public institution...‘Our concept provides a strong 'design line' that will act as a framework to guide present and future works,’ Morgen Schmidt says.

Courtesy of schmidt hammer lassen.

Naomi Milgrom appoints OMA's Rem Koolhaas, David Gianotten for fourth MPavilion

2017-02-20T23:52:00-05:00

In pavilions you can test things you cannot do within buildings -Rem Koolhaas

Naomi Milgrom has appointed high-profile architects Rem Koolhaas and David Gianotten of Netherlands-based architecture firm OMA to design the fourth MPavilion temporary culture venue for Melbourne. MPavilion is Australia’s leading architectural commission and design event conceived and created by the Naomi Milgrom Foundation in 2014. Every year, one new temporary pavilion, designed by a leading international architect, is erected in Melbourne’s historic Queen Victoria Gardens.

Rem Koolhaas, founder of OMA and winner of the 2000 Pritzker Prize, is a controversial architect known for his large-scale projects such as CCTV "Pants Building" in Beijing and De Rotterdam "Vertical City" pictured above. On this year's appointment, Ms. Milgrom said “Rem Koolhaas is one of the world’s most provocative and influential architects. His contribution to the cultural landscape as an urban thinker together with OMA’s multi-disciplinary approach to architecture reflects MPavilion’s desire to inspire...

Tour Zaha Hadid's "stacked vases" tower in Australia

2016-07-14T12:49:00-04:00

Imagine blending the veiny facade of 8 Spruce Street and the jaunty offset of the New Museum with Zaha Hadid's signature grace, and you might get something like the 54-story, 70,000 square meter 600 Collins Street, a tower that is reminiscent of a stacked series of ridged vases. The four principal segments of the tower each denote a different part of the program while simultaneously integrating access to public transit and creating civic space.

“The design has been defined by Melbourne’s rich and diverse urban landscape, reinterpreted in a contemporary solution driven by the logical division of its overall volume that will enhance the city’s public realm with generous communal spaces,” said Zaha Hadid Architects’ Michele Pasca di Magliano. “We are honored to be working with our partners in Melbourne to deliver this project for the city.”

Here's a video showing site context:

Melbourne is world’s most liveable city for fifth consecutive year

2015-08-20T15:24:00-04:00

In any event, it's as you were for the "haves" at the top of list, with Melbourne taking the top spot for a fifth year running, with Vienna, Vancouver, Toronto and Adelaide/Calgary (tied at 5) completing the top five most livable cities in 2015. [...] these cities have "relatively few challenges to living standards," and enjoy a good infrastructure, healthcare system and a low murder rate. Unsurprisingly, Damascus remains the least livable city, with Syria embroiled in a bloody civil war.

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