MPavilion: Encounters With Design and Architecture

Description

Each year, MPavilion blooms as a unique, innovative civic space for the community to engage with and share. Complemented by an independent cultural program driven by Australian and international artists, designers, thinkers and cultural institutions, it's an invitation to communicate, collaborate, educate and create. It is, in the words of Professor Alan Pert, Director of Melbourne School of Design at the University of Melbourne, a 'cultural laboratory ... an educational environment beyond the institution, a museum without a collection'. Centred around the six pavilion projects to date, by architects Sean Godsell, Amanda Levete, Bijoy Jain, Rem Koolhaas & David Gianotten, Carme Pinos and Glenn Murcutt respectively, MPavilion will reflect on the projects' ongoing architectural and cultural impact. Incorporating architectural drawings, renders, models and design statements, as well as eight essays by leading design writers and photographs documenting each project and the activities that it inspired, this book considers how each architect responds to or highlights issues relevant to contemporary design, architecture and community building. In doing so, MPavilion positions their collective endeavour as a global model for cultural activation, design leadership, place-making, community building, architectural tourism, philanthropy and public/private partnerships. This is at once the perfect introduction to and critical assessment of the MPavilion project. An architectural commission at heart, MPavilion is more than a structure, it's a community.

MPavilion is an annual architectural commission designed by a leading international architect for the Queen Victoria Gardens in Melbourne, Australia. Inspired by the Serpentine Pavilion in London, the MPavilion project was established in 2014 by Naomi Milgrom AO, one of Australia's foremost cultural visionaries and philanthropists, and is funded by the Naomi Milgrom Foundation in partnership with the City of Melbourne and Victorian State Government.