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.
MPavilion 2019 by Glenn Murcutt. Photo:
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.
The latest Fugitive Structures pavilion to be commissioned by the Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation (SCAF) is a bamboo structure called “Green Ladder” designed by architect du jour Vo Trong Nghia whose mission is to bring back greenery into the city via architecture, especially in his home country of Vietnam.
Green Ladder designed by Vo Trong Nghia Architects for the Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation. Photo: Dianna Snape
In my role as media consultant of the Fugitive Structures architecture pavilion series for SCAF, I was able to meet Nghia and also speak to him about the structure, as well as hear some behind-the-scenes details of the bamboo treatment process used on the installation. Read more →
I have been a long admirer of Gene Sherman, one of the most important figures in Sydney’s art scene. She was well known for Sherman Galleries when she shifted gears to open the not-for-profit Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation (or SCAF) around eight years ago. More recently, Gene has turned her interest to the architecture pavilion, commissioning architects and artists to create garden pavilions and installations as part of the Fugitive Structures program. In this, the third year of the series, SCAF presents two works: Sway, a garden pavilion by Israeli architecture collective SRMZ (Matanya Sack, Uri Reicher, Liat Muller and Eyal Zur); and Owner-Occupy, an installation by Sydney-based architecture/artist duo Hugo Moline and Heidi Axelsen.
Sway from above
Gene’s connection to Israel (where her daughter lives) was the catalyst to commissioning SRMZ, who were selected from a pool of architects, briefed to create a pavilion inspired by Sukkot, an annual festival where families erect a sukkah – a temporary shelter commemorating the Old Testament story of the Israelites sheltering in the wilderness en route to ‘The Promised Land’ . Their response, Sway, is an ephemeral structure whose shape references the tents of the nomadic Bedouins, built with steel, an agricultural fabric and stitched with red string. The pavilion leads the visitor through the garden under a series of arches that balance fine stitching with a sense of being incomplete and mobile. Read more →
