Australia’s only Pritzker Prize-winning architect Glenn Murcutt is best known for his long, horizontal, climate-responsive architecture; shed-like residential buildings made for viewing the Australian landscape.
This year, Murcutt has been commissioned by the Naomi Milgrom Foundation to design the sixth annual MPavilion, a project that brings temporary architecture to Queen Victoria Gardens in the heart of Melbourne. His response has been to create a long, horizontal shed-like structure – but this is where the similarities to his other projects end.
That’s because this building is not permanent, but designed as a temporary structure – its steel frame and fabric roof is lightweight and designed to be easily dismantled and moved to a new site. Even better, the roof is designed to light up at night so that the whole building acts as a lantern in the park.
The building is positioned so that it is partially shaded by trees, while electronically-operated fabric blinds create extra shade in the hot Melbourne summer. Alcoves at each end of the pavilion are lined with membrane to the outside and feature timber slat doors internally.
For Murcutt, the building is inspired by one particular memory of lying under the shade of an aircraft wing while visiting the Yaxchilán ruins in Mexico about thirty years ago. He says: “I had been invited to see the ruins with a small group and we travelled by light aircraft to an airfield slotted amongst the tropical jungle. For lunch, we had a picnic in the shade provided by the wing of the aircraft. In the high humidity of the tropical climate we laid out a tablecloth on the ground establishing ‘place’.
“After lunch, I put my rucksack against the aircraft’s under carriage and laid down, and there above me was the beautiful wing, lined with aircraft fabric—which led me to the MPavilion’s roof—with the tablecloth as my place, together with my view the Yaxchilán, and the surrounding forest, it was a wonderful moment.”
It is always lovely to hear a fully-formed narrative that acts as direct inspiration for an architectural project, and Murcutt’s story is not only evocative, but also practical in that it inspired the use of an aircraft material in the construction of the structure.
The project also resulted in the development of the MP stool by Chris Connell, which features a steel structure and mesh fabric skin, a design influenced by the subtle curvature of the pavilion’s roof canopy.
Architecture pavilions are only useful and functional if they lead to new thinking by experimenting with new technologies or materials, and even then, some critics argue that temporary architectural structures are a waste of materials and resources.
In this case, the use of Serge Ferrari Flexlite fabric to the roof and Ceconite aircraft fabric to the ceiling as new materials for construction, legitimises the pavilion, and the ability for the structure to be dismantled and reused elsewhere means these materials will have another life. And for the 2019 / 2020 summer, MPavilion will host a huge range of events in the structure, so it will be well used.
Geometry
The pavilion will have a rectangular footprint with a total useable covered floor area of approx. 230m2 (24mx 9.6m).
The overall roof area is 315.9m2 (10.6m wide x 29.8m long).
The maximum roof height will be approx. 3.9m with a maximum internal ceiling height of 2.5m.
Materials
Serge Ferrari Flexlite 702 S2 (white) has been specified as the tensile roof fabric.
The ceiling fabric is Ceconite ‐ a synthetic material the same weight as cotton and is heat-shrunk to fit. It has a translucent characteristic.
The blinds are Weiner Vertitex 2 rope model fittings and will use the Serge Ferrari Soltis 86 ‐ 2044 white fabric which is semi-transparent.
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