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 debate about the role of design in building equitable and creative cities.”

The design, which has yet to be revealed, will likely focus on the changing relationship between Australia’s rural areas to its rapidly growing urban centers. “What is very interesting in that is the juxtaposition of the rim of urban realms in Australia and the huge vast nature in the centre” said David Gianotten, the managing director at OMA. “It’s almost never explored or part of the debate about cities and about their development. And the most livable cities are in Australia, but nobody talks about the whole continent and what it actually means to be there, which is an interesting debate which maybe can happen also in the pavilion.” You can watch the two discuss the MPavilion 2017 Commission here.

This news comes on the heels of MPavilion’s 2016 closing, which was designed by the acclaimed Indian architect Bijoy Jain of Studio Mumbai and is pictured above. Previous architects invited to design the Pavilion include Australia’s Sean Godsell and the British architect Amanda Levete of AL_A in 2015. 

Koolhaas and Gianotten’s design will be the last in the series, although a City spokeswoman assures it is not the end of Ms. Milgrom nor the Foundation, which will expand its scope of activities in July to host a symposium on architecture for social change, at the Wheeler Centre in central Melbourne. As for the Pavilion itself, it is unclear what it will become after this final run due to the large costs that would be incurred by the City of Melbourne for it to remain active.  

MPavilion will open free to the public on October 3rd, 2017