Editor's picks: MPavilion season 11

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A fresh lineup of summer events are scheduled to take place at Tadao Ando's MPavilion 10 in Melbourne's Queen Victoria Gardens between 21 November 2024 and 22 March 2025.

This marks the second season of events hosted at this particular pavilion, after City of Melbourne granted the Naomi Milgrom Foundation's request to prolong the duration for which the temporary structure could remain in the gardens to June 2025. The previous nine MPavilion installations were dismantled after a summer season of programming and relocated elsewhere.

The program for season 11 has been thoughtfully curated by the newly formed Curatorial Collective, a cross-disciplinary group of eight creative practitioners based in Melbourne, including Bradley Kerr, Kate Davis, Bron Belcher, Martina Copley, Harry Shang Lun Lee, Britt Devlin, Zya Kane and Eliki Reade. Each event fits into one of three overarching themes: Home Ground, Building Blocks and Every Living Thing.

Here, ArchitectureAu rounds up the top architecture and design events:

Sunday 1 December 2024

MPavilion's eighth annual Blakitecture forum features a yarn between the creative directors of the 2025 Australia Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale. Jack Gillmer, Emily McDaniel and Michael Mossman join moderator Bradley Kerr to share insights on the vision and design intent behind their exhibition Home, which will be debuted in Venice in May 2025. The concept is highly participatory, allowing visitors to storytell their understandings of home through the lens of Country.

Tuesday 3 December 2024

This event, held on the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, features a comprehensive panel discussion focused on accessibility in Melbourne. The objective of the conversation is to promote a deeper understanding of the challenges many individuals encounter while navigating the city and the progress that is being made with inclusive design and planning. Prior to the event, a group of participants will travel from Flinders Street Station to the pavilion, treating the route as a live case study and gathering accessibility insights as they go. Their experiences and observations will help to spark real-time conversations during the panel.

Wednesday 4 December 2024

This talk led by Caroline Bos, co-founder and principal urban planner at UNStudio, looks at inclusive design through a series of personal lenses. The panel will be informed by a series of "urban explorations" - one-on-one sessions where Bos will be guided through Melbourne by people from diverse backgrounds who will help her connect to city through their eyes. These experiences will form foundations for wide-ranging discussions about the ways lived experience can inform inclusive urban design. There will also be an informal post-panel Q&A where attendees can keep adding to the topics and pushing the discussion forward.

Tuesday 10 December 2024

An expert panel explores how to design homes and communities that support older people's autonomy and quality of life while mitigating the risks that can arise in institutional care models. The discussion features insights from architect Ana Sá, landscape architect and horticultural consultant Tim Mitchell, design anthropologist Miguel Gomez Hernandez, and independent living resident Maggie Moran. Key topics include the role of design in prolonging independence and greater quality of life, as well as the impact of cultural attitudes towards ageing on current urban models.

Wednesday 11 December 2024

A conversation between heritage experts who specialise in different fields of heritage conservation will explore the varying forms of heritage that can exist within a specific location. The dialogue will first focus on the intertwined First Nations, colonial and natural heritage embedded in Queen Victoria Gardens, before expanding to discuss heritage on a city scale. As the sun begins to set, the internal geometries of the pavilion will become a canvas for Belgrade-born architect, researcher and curator Milica Božić's immersive light installation. It's a work that creatively adapts the same light detection and ranging technology used in geological mapping to trace the familiar details of the pavilion and project those details back in new ways.