MPavilion

At the heart of Bijoy Jain and Studio Mumbai’s ethos is the concept of lore, defined as “a body of traditional knowledge passed on by word of mouth”. It follows that, in the creation of MPavilion, lore was heartily practiced when the MPavilion building team travelled to India to learn Studio Mumbai’s methods. This MTalk was a panel talk with the hands-on crew behind MPavilion’s build. Tony Isaacso...

The conversation around architectural design at all levels—from breakfast bars to boardrooms—has rarely been louder. And with Victoria looking at introducing an apartment design standards framework, this panel focuses on suggested improvements to the design review process, minimum size standards and aesthetic guidelines that would support quality, adaptable and sustainable housing. With these chan...

What does it take to commission and put together an event like MPavilion? How does the design process unfurl? What does the handmade architecture movement propose for the future of architecture? For our first MTalks event for MPavilion 2016/17 we revisited the process that has born Bijoy Jain’s stunning design—from brief, to Studio Mumbai’s unique creative process, to build. Join MPavilion 2016/17...

The word ‘lore’ refers to a body of knowledge, especially of a traditional nature, typically passed on by word of mouth. So, how does the concept of lore relate to architecture? At this Melbourne School of Design and MPavilion lecture, celebrated Indian architect Bijoy Jain discussed how the concept of lore is central to his practice and philosophy. The founder of sustainable architecture firm Stu...

Ethical beliefs shape the way we live and work—what we do, what we make and the world we create through our choices. Policy makers, architects and designers hold very privileged positons within our community as their beliefs impact many others due to the nature of their work. In the Boyd Foundation's 2016 talks series, eight eminent speakers—all highly regarded for their thoughtfulness and recogni...

Start your day with a conversation about how we shape the city—and how the city shapes us—hosted by Barrie Barton, co-founder of Right Angle Studio, Rooftop Cinema and Three Thousand, Melbourne’s first independent online city guide. Reporting on new music, good books, independent fashion, food and drink in the city since 2005, Three Thousand is written by locals for locals, and reflects the changi...

Opposites attract in the wild, in romance and—evidently—in architecture. Join Toby Whitfield (CEO of ShapeShift, our evening’s presenters) and Richard Blythe (dean of RMIT’s School of Architecture and Design) as they discuss the fascinating history of how architects and designers make use of composite building materials in their work. How do you choose the right fibre and resin for a 34-storey sky...

Consortium: A series of conversations within a series of talks—presented by a coalition of partners who support emerging and experimental art and design practices in Melbourne and beyond. This first Consortium of the 2015/16 season brought Next Wave, Gertrude Contemporary, West Space, RMIT Design Hub and MPavilion got together to consort on invisible hands. The panel—including artists Anastasia Kl...

When you think of the bustling sidewalks of New York City, walls of lush greenery do not immediately come to mind. But environmental artist Natalie Jeremijenko wants to challenge ideas about ‘normal’ cityscapes—through her Agbags project. Agbags are vertical urban farms that practically aim to promote environmental health and, more broadly, get people thinking about architecture’s intersection wit...

Drawing our marathon MRelay to an end, Utopia explores an ideal, imaginary state in which society, politics and culture are perfect. It can often be difficult to face the reality of today’s world, where global climate change is leading to rising sea levels, unprecedented environmental destruction, a widening gap between rich and poor, and countless human rights violations. It’s easy to dream inste...

After contemplating the defining nature of our urban landscapes it’s time to consider the role of personal transformation. Transformation design is a human-centred, interdisciplinary process that seeks to change the behaviour and form of individuals, systems and organisations in desirable and sustainable ways—often for socially progressive ends. The Transformation leg of MRelay explores how we can...

The second leg of MRelay is Ritual. It’s all about the origin of form, and its connection to the invention and interpretation of rituals. Do we offer a means of communication when we conduct a set of routine actions in the same manner, or perform a set of actions in a fixed sequence? Can these symbolic sets of actions create community? How do they persist in and affect our everyday lives? How impo...

The first leg of MRelay is devoted to Habitat. As we leap from the starting blocks, we’ll cast our gaze around: at our natural environments, our sense of place and how place transforms us. Today’s places are changing fast—whether they’re a tropical rainforest or a city such as London, Melbourne or Berlin, a habitat for artists or an ecology for designers. ‘Design thinking’ stimulates a natural inq...

Treatment was a two-day, site-responsive public art project on display (via an eighty-minute bus tour) at Melbourne Water’s Western Treatment Plant in Werribee on 14 and 21 November 2015. Curators David Cross and Cameron Bishop invited six artists to work with the plant’s sights and sounds—its treatment lagoons and abandoned former township, its world-renowned wetlands and resident waterfowl—in or...

What happens when you combine elements of a sewing machine and an industrial knitting machine? If you’re British-based inventor Oluwaseyi Sosanya, you develop the 3D Weaver—a loom specially designed for weaving in three dimensions. From its Honeycomb and ZigZag weaves to the compressible 0~90 pattern, the machine has potential applications in industries spanning medicine, aerospace, architecture a...

Australian cities face a range of environmental challenges. Do ever-taller concrete towers pose a threat to the sustainability of our vibrant inner cities? What can we do to protect and preserve green or culturally significant public spaces, especially on our expanding urban fringes? And how do we develop new ones? A new generation of Aboriginal architects, designers and leaders is making signific...

In these times of global economic systems and the effect of the material on contemporary culture, what does it take to imagine and invent spaces where we can experience collective generating, sharing and discussing under the title of ‘art’? What if artistic practices worked on freeing themselves from the logics of commodification? Listen to the third and final in our series of salon conversations...

What is Melbourne’s urban frontier in the 21st century? In one of our final MTalks events for the season, former Victorian premier the Hon Jeff Kennett will present an exploration of urban planning, and kick off a discussion about our history, the city’s evolution and the issues we’re yet to face. Hosted by Gina Levenspiel—author of the recently published Miracle Swamp: The place of Queen Victoria...

“How could we create the feeling, the experience, the sensation of a tree canopy, but in a completely abstract way, with man-made materials?” In an interview for Architectural Review, Amanda Levete talked about some of the thinking and collaboration that went into AL_A’s MPavilion design. Here's the first of three lunchtime conversations about this year’s MPavilion construction, and the unique puz...

MTalks—'Miracle Swamp' book launch • 30 Jan 2016 by MPavilion

MTalks—Interval 'Between a thought and a feeling' • 29 Jan 2016 by MPavilion

How did engineers from Arup tackle the design challenge of seamlessly incorporating sound and light into the 2015 MPavilion? Key players from the brief-to-build team Robert Buckingham of MPavilion and Arup’s Brendon McNiven talked us through their material, technological and botanical decisions, offering us a behind-the-scenes look at everything that goes into designing, building and wiring up a h...

For this discussion, our panellists delved into the idea of galleries as ‘testing spaces’ for risk, experiment, play and speculation. Following an introduction from RMIT Design Hub curator Fleur Watson, artist and landscape architect Charles Anderson and arts academic Jondi Keane exchanged ideas about their new RMIT Design Hub exhibition slash laboratory space: Technics & Touch: Body-Matter-Machin...

“How could we create the feeling, the experience, the sensation of a tree canopy, but in a completely abstract way, with man-made materials?” In an interview for Architectural Review, Amanda Levete talked about some of the thinking and collaboration that went into AL_A’s MPavilion design. The third and final installment of MTalks in a trilogy of lunchtime conversations about this year’s MPavilion...

Being human is not always easy. For centuries the mind sciences have attempted to unlock the mysteries of why some people live a life of quiet despair while others flourish. Dr Jo Mitchell explored how the wisdom of key thinkers from the mind sciences might help us to live well in everyday life. How have these experts’ ideas shaped our understanding of the human mind and behaviour?