Pritzker Prize-winning Japanese architect Tadao Ando has been awarded the commission for MPavilion 10 by the Naomi Milgrom Foundation. Over the past decade, MPavilion, the country’s foremost annual architecture commission and design festival, has provided a platform for some of the world’s most significant architectural thinkers to create a space for engagement with urgent urban, civic, and design concerns.
The MPavilion commission will be Ando’s first project in Australia.
“Each year, MPavilion commissions architects with a unique design language and social purpose and gives them complete freedom to realise their vision. I have long admired how Tadao Ando responds to and incorporates the particularity of a place into his design, and his belief that architecture can shape a society,” said Naomi Milgrom.
“As the MPavilion prepares for the 10th edition, we look forward to sharing Ando’s work in Australia for the very first time and having his MPavilion become a vital site in the cultural and community life of Melbourne.”
Ando is a leading contemporary architect whose major works include the Church of the Light (1989; Osaka, Japan), Pulitzer Arts Foundation (2001; St. Louis, USA), Chichu Art Museum (2004; Naoshima, Japan), 21_21 Design Sight (2007; Tokyo, Japan), and Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection (2020; Paris, France). A self-taught architect, he was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1995.
“The design for the MPavilion began with a desire to find a scene of eternity within the public gardens of the Queen Victoria Gardens in Melbourne,” shared Ando. “Eternal, not in material or structure, but in the memory of a landscape that will continue to live in people’s hearts.”
Details of Ando’s design for MPavilion 10 will be revealed in May this year, and it will open to the public on 16 November 2023.
The annual five-month festival of free public programs will continue at the 2023 MPavilion with talks and lectures, music performances, and kid-friendly workshops, among many other design-focused events. The 2023 themes, which will be informed by the concerns of Tadao Ando’s practice, will be announced in the months to come.
MPavilion is an annual initiative of the Naomi Milgrom Foundation and is supported by the City of Melbourne and the Victorian State Government through Creative Victoria. MPavilion 9 by the Bangkok-based architecture and design practice all(zone) is currently open to the public until 6 April 2023.
The first nine MPavilions have welcomed more than 900,000 visitors and hosted more than 3,500 free events since its establishment in 2014. At the end of each MPavilion season, the Naomi Milgrom Foundation gifts the pavilion to the people of Victoria and relocates it to a new, permanent, public home in the community.
Image: Tadao Ando by Kinji Kanno | courtesy Tadao Ando Architect & Associate
