Since 2014, MPavilion has been Australia’s answer to the Serpentine Pavilion. Every year, an excellent architect is chosen to design a public pavilion for temporary use in Melbourne’s Queen Victoria Gardens. Past pavilions have been designed by Sean Godsell, Bijoy Jain, OMA & Glen Murcutt, among others. A number of public events are held in the structure during temporary display, after which the pavilions are moved to a permanent site in Melbourne and gifted to the city.
The second MPavilion was designed in 2015 by the studio of RIBA Stirling Prize-winning architect Amanda Levete. The structure was designed to emulate the sensation of being inside a forest, and was constructed using aerospace materials and technology. Transluscent ‘petals’ are supported by an array of slender columns.
AL_A’s 2015 MPavilion was moved from its temporary location to Docklands Park, at the corner of Collins Street and Waterview Walk. This civic gesture provides human scale urban relief to a new part of the city that currently lacks charm. It’s also an interesting example of adaptive reuse of temporary structures, and intrinsically environmentally sustainable!
Check out the map location below if you are looking for the pavilion, or just curious what happened to this unique structure.
Kevin Hui & Andrew Maynard described the pavilion incredibly on their Archimarathon YouTube channel:
Images by Jonathan Choe
