Archinect - News

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...

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...

From sundlaugs, to rockpools and The Basin

2016-05-24T00:07:00-04:00

These public pools, or sundlaugs, serve as the communal heart of Iceland, sacred places whose affordability and ubiquity are viewed as a kind of civil right....The pool is Iceland’s social space: where families meet neighbors, where newcomers first receive welcome, where rivals can’t avoid one another.

Dan Kois considers how communal pools and the sociability of soaking, are "a key to Icelandic well-being."

On a related note, Dan Hill recently published an essay reflecting on ‘The Pool’, a book published as part of The Australian pavilion for the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale. The interviews collected therein he finds, make a case for the pool as the authentically antipodean contribution to urbanism, a distinctly Australian public place, the country’s piazza.

MPavillion is a kind of southern hemisphere Serpentine Pavilion

2014-10-24T18:29:00-04:00

Conceived as a kind of southern hemisphere Serpentine Pavilion, the MPavilion has just opened its first work, a 12×12 meter kinetic box by the local architect Sean Godsell. Using the typically restrained massing of his homes as a template Godsell has then animated the space with a fully louvered skin. The pavilion is placed in the 18th century Queen Victoria Garden with Melbourne’s high rises serving as a backdrop.

It's spring in Melbourne and there could not be a better place to spend an afternoon having a coffee than in a building that completely opens up.