MPavilion (24 01 24)

MP2: AL_A

MP2: AL_A

MPAVILION 2
Al_a

MPAVILION 2
Al_a

Our second MPavilion was designed by AL_A, the studio of award-winning British architect Amanda Levete was gifted to the City of Melbourne by the Naomi Milgrom Foundation and now resides in Docklands Park at the corner of Collins Street and Harbour Esplanade, Docklands.

about 
the commission

MPavilion 2. Image by Rory Gardiner.

It’s an honour to have been commissioned by the Naomi Milgrom Foundation to design the second edition of MPavilion. I’ve visited Australia three times in the past six years, and without doubt Melbourne is my favourite city. I’ve always met a diverse and interesting group of friendly, welcoming people. It’s people that make a city creative—and that’s why I love Melbourne.

The brief is a great opportunity to design a structure that responds to the climate and the landscape. I wanted to exploit the temporary nature of the pavilion form and produce a design that speaks in response to the weather. Rooting the pavilion in its parkland setting, I looked to create the sensation of a forest canopy in the heart of the city that gives shelter to a program of events.

 

At AL_A, we have a long history of working with boat builders, and Australia has some of the finest. We’re working with a nautical fabricator to employ the boundary-pushing technology of composite materials to create the canopy, which is made up of a number of seemingly fragile, translucent petals supported by impossibly slender columns that gently sway in the breeze.

—Amanda Levete

 

about 
Al_A

 


 

Amanda Levete is a Stirling Prize–winning architect and principal of the architecture studio AL_A.

Recently completed projects include two buildings for Wadham College at the University of Oxford; a centre for the cancer care charity Maggie’s in Southampton; the Victoria & Albert Museum Exhibition Road Quarter in London, and MAAT, the Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology in Lisbon.

Ongoing commissions include the renovation and expansion of Paisley Museum in Scotland, a prototype fusion building at Culham in the UK for clean energy firm General Fusion, the transformation of D’Ieteren headquarters in Brussels and the Belgrade Philharmonic Concert Hall in Serbia.

Amanda trained at the Architectural Association and worked for Richard Rogers before joining Future Systems as a partner in 1989, where she realised ground-breaking buildings including the Media Centre at Lord’s Cricket Ground and Selfridges department store in Birmingham.

Amanda was awarded a CBE for services to architecture in 2017 and became a Royal Academician in 2021. She is currently a trustee of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

V&A Courtyard. Copyright Hufton Crow

 


 

Lord’s Media Centre designed by Future Systems.
Selfridges designed by Future Systems. Photo by Norbert Schoerner.

Wominjeka (Welcome). We acknowledge the people of the Eastern Kulin Nation as the Traditional Custodians of the land on which MPavilion stands. We pay our respects to their Elders, past and present – and recognise they have been creating, telling stories and caring for Country for thousands of generations.

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