The Naomi Milgrom Foundation has unveiled the 2021 MPavilion program, offering over 250 free events over the span of 152 days, its longest to date. Now in its 8th season, the event welcomes design enthusiasts from Australia and across the globe to celebrate the important contributions of the design community to cultural landscapes. This year's pavilion, titled 'The LightCatcher' is designed by Venice-based MAP studio, and will be installed in Melbourne’s Queen Victoria Gardens from the 2nd of December until the 24th of April 2022.
As the city regenerates after a long pandemic, MPavilion hopes to play a key role in supporting Melbourne’s creative community and revitalizing the city's cultural activities. Each month will focus on a different theme, comprising of: Island Life (November), That Which Makes Things Visible (December), Vacation, Location, Staycation (January), Rituals: Marking Life (February), Design as a Human Right (March), and The Reality of this Time (April).
The event will bring together over 500 local and international guests, and will feature special talks and events with renowned international architects and designers such as Francesco Magnani and Traudy Pelzel from MAP studio, Peter Maddison, Space Saloon, Stockholm-based architecture office Secretary, MVRDV, Sauerbruch Hutton, Snøhetta, UNStudio, and Zaha Hadid Architects, to name a few. The event will also host musical performances, workshops, and celebrations,
This year’s MProjects, which is a series of unique creations and residencies for MPavilion, will feature an inaugural launch of Skywhalepapa, a giant hot-air-balloon sculpture by Australia’s renowned visual artist Patricia Piccinini, a spatial design installation by Secretary Project, the fifth outing of BLAKitecture: The Manifesto, a three-day forum on Indigenous architecture, and MMeets—The Salon: Designing the Self, featuring a series of events on all aspects of the salon.
The Lightcatcher, designed by Francesco Magnani and Traudy Pelzel of MAP studio, responds to the site and represents a significant path "re-promotes" creativity and cultural life in the city. The structure is a mirrored kaleidoscopic cube with an open steel structure on four u-shaped concrete columns. It's conceived as an urban lighthouse, with angled mirrored panels acting as "a container of ideas that reflect and amplify both the people and cultural activity taking place in MPavilion, and its ever-changing environment in the Queen Victoria Gardens".
Naomi Milgrom AC, founder of the Naomi Milgrom Foundation, and commissioner of the installation explained that “we are incredibly proud of our partnership with MAP studio. Delivering ‘The Lightcatcher’ under such challenging global circumstances is a testament to both the remarkable minds behind the design and the teams who realised its construction. Their inspirational MPavilion is poised to re-invigorate our city as it plays host for the summer to the energy and ideas of hundreds of designers, architects and performances that will create, work and play underneath.”
