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Architects: MAP Studio Magnani Pelzel Architetti Associati
- Area: 150 m²
- Year: 2021
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Photographs:Anthony Richardson, John Gollings, Casey Horsfield, Jeff Raty
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Lead Architects: Francesco Magnani, Traudy Pelzel
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Structural Consultants: AECOM Australia, Nigel Bourdon, Robert Macaulay
Text description provided by the architects. The project for the temporary pavilion commissioned by the Naomi Milgrom Foundation in Queen Victoria Gardens explores the condition of an architectural device as a powerful attractor and display of the creative and dynamic quality of the city of Melbourne, as previous editions have fully demonstrated. The structure we imagined was a shimmering device that qualified itself as an urban lighthouse that hosted and enlighten the cultural activities for the community planned for the 2021 summer season in Melbourne.
The pavilion’s geometric abstraction qualified it as a stage intended to host a multiplicity of ever-changing events, such as the variations of the light that it will be able to reflect. A kaleidoscopic structure that reflects and amplifies activities, people and colors. For these reasons, we called it The Light Catcher. The Light Catcher proposed itself as an urban sign of the consolidated role of a civic place of meeting and inspiration that distinguished in the past years the MPavillon event in Queen Victoria Gardens.
The pavilion was conceived as a kind of stage around which people gather to attend events and shows. Its permeable system of ground supports U shaped qualified itself as a livable device in the different ways that the intense program and the different types of events have required. The three-dimensional mesh – based on 2x2x2 meters square modules – configures a volume with a base of 12 meters side (6 modules) and a high of 6 meters (3 modules) that covered overall an area of 144 sqm.
The structure seemed to float above the ground level on a colored organic shaped crushed rubber surface and it defines inside a hollow space. The three-dimensional lattice was supported by four pillars made of precast reinforced concrete. These elements, in force of the particular U-shaped form and smooth edges design, were used also as sitting places. We believe that the kaleidoscope structure has taken on a double meaning of an urban lighthouse to gather people around as an expression of new hope and to glitter our minds into appreciating new horizons. But it was also a kind of warning: it was not a shelter in nature as the previous pavilions were, but an element of amplification of human activities in nature as a metaphor of man’s current condition in relation to our environment - inspiring an aspect of new awareness of this fragile situation.
