After much anticipation MPavilion, a major international architecture commission and design collaboration, was unveiled in Queen Victoria Gardens this week.

Initiated by Naomi Milgrom Foundation and designed by AL_A, the studio of renowned British architect Amanda Levete, MPavilion 2015 will help activate Melbourne’s public spaces this summer with a dynamic cultural program.

The second groundbreaking MPavilion employs materials and technology developed for the aerospace industry to create a graceful ‘forest canopy’ of five and three metre‐wide translucent petals supported on 95 slender carbon fibre columns four metre‐high columns.

The design employs recently developed composite construction methods, refined in collaboration with Australian specialist mouldCAM, to create a modular design that consists of 13 large and 30 small petals that respond to the environment, shivering in the wind, and creating a play of light and shade underneath. Each petal is just a few millimetres thick and the resulting ultra-lightweight structure sits lightly in the landscape and gently responds to the climate.  Each column is fitted with a ring of LED lights that are activated in the dark and form a beautiful light performance synchronised with an evening soundscape in Melbourne’s Queen Victoria Gardens every night.

Amanda Levete says that she is delighted that the 2015 MPavilion can now be shared with the public. “Our Pavilion is a celebration of those natural shelters where we come together and we have achieved an exceptionally light, open structure that sits gently on the land and allows the light, the wind, and sometimes the rain, to form part of the show. It is designed to provide a contemplative, personal experience as well as a place to congregate,” she says.

Naomi Milgrom AO, Chair of Naomi Milgrom Foundation who commissioned Amanda Levete to design the 2015 MPavilion says that Amanda’s MPavilion creates an elegant and magical architectural experience for all to enjoy. “MPavilion has set a precedent – its experimental and a thought-leader. It responds to its setting and transforms materials taking technology and innovation to new levels. A utopian space MPavilion will act as catalyst for the creative industry and the community to explore design’s role in contemporary culture.”

Every evening at sunset, during MPavilion’s presentation from October until February, the pavilion structure will create its own evening sunset ritual that is a collaboration between the architect, lighting designer Ben Cobham and sound artist Matthias Schack-Arnott of Speak Percussion.

MPavilion is presented free to the public over four months from 6 October 2015 until 7 February 2016 and populated by more than 200 free events, created in collaboration with more than 200 arts organisations, designers and architects from Melbourne and around the globe.

MPavilion
mpavilion.org