Melbourne: Studio Mumbai creates spectacular MPavilion 2016 made in bamboo

Since 2014, the Naomi Milgrom Foundation appoints an international architect to design a temporary pavilion to be installed in Queen Victoria Gardens, Melbourne. The project is supported by the City of Melbourne and the Victorian State Government.

Every year, the MPavilion is aimed to be a venue for meetings, performances, workshops and installation and is usually opened from October to February.

After Sean Godsell in 2014 and Amanda Levete Architects in 2015, this year’s commission went to Indian architectural practice Studio Mumbai, led by Bijoy Jain (b. 1965).

The 2016 pavilion designed by Studio Mumbai is a 12 meter-high structure conceived as a large gathering space and ideally aimed “to connect ground, sky, and earth”, as Bijoy Jain says.

Bijoy Jain, portrait, photo Timothy Burgess

Bijoy Jain, sketches of the MPavilion 2016

The structure is made in bamboo, assembled by using traditional, orally-transmitted Indian techniques. It is composed of a basic scaffolding-like structure, with poles and braces composed of bamboo canes and simply tied to one another through friction-tight rope connections.

MPavilion 2016, construction process and techniques; photos Nicholas Watt

To reinforce the symbolic link between ground and sky, as well as to create a formal reference to Australia, the roof is encased in red earth, so that “the same mud you stand on is now on top of your head”.

Nevertheless Jain wanted this building to be somehow a “universal” one, a symbolic work aimed to represent the relationship between man and nature, rather than to be strictly specific to the place where it is physically located.

MPavilion 2016 will be open in Melbourne from October 5, 2016 through February 7, 2017.

More info at http://mpavilion.org/