You can bet the next MPavilion, the fourth in Melbourne businesswoman and arts patron Naomi Milgrom's annual series of pop-up architectural structures, will be a kool haas.
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The renowned Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas and his firm OMA's managing partner David Gianotten will design the next MPavilion, Milgrom's foundation will announce today.
Their appointment comes as OMA establishes a branch office in Australia to help manage projects, including its design for Perth's new Museum of Western Australia. OMA's recent major international projects include London's Design Museum, Taipei Performing Arts Centre, the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow and Milan's Prada Foundation.
It follows designs by Australian architect Sean Godsell (2014), Britain's Amanda and Indian architect Bijoy Jain. Jain's handmade MPavilion closed at the weekend after hosting an Unplugged music stage for White Night Melbourne, one of almost 500 events that attracted 94,000 people to the site since it was erected in October.
Ms Milgrom, the CEO of Australian fashion chain the Sussan Group, said it was OMA's design for one of Italian designer Miuccia Prada's New York retail store that first caught her eye.
"I have been a fan of REM Koolhaas and OMA for a long, long time," she says.
"In my business life, the Prada store built in 2001 was magical and a big departure from what had been done before in terms of retail environments.
"I've followed for a long time their passion for creative cultural spaces, whether it's the Moscow museum or Prada Foundation or Seattle Library.
"They have a consistent passion for building public and community spaces and of course, this is what MPavilion is all about.
"They have a very strong multidisciplinary approach to architecture and design and a creative connectedness."
OMA's way of working reflects many of the pillars of MPavilion, including a desire
to inspire debate about the role of design in building equitable and creative cities, she says.
Speaking ahead of the announcement, Gianotten – who was until recently based in Hong Kong and had often visited Melbourne, including the three previous MPavilion structures, since meeting Milgrom several years ago – said the OMA design for MPavilion would be very different from its predecessors.
"It will definitely be different again … you will see that in the architectural expression. I was fortunate I have seen all three in operation and with a program. We have a different approach, more of a pavilion that also will be a platform for use and performance rather that [just an] object.
"And we are interpreting it as a machine for use. That can be taken in different ways and can support everything from small performances to larger gatherings and the gardens around it; an inside-outside approach that can be very intimate from inside and a backdrop for the larger gardens.
"We're also trying to create a juxtaposition between the [proximity] of the city and the vast nature around it."
The movement of people in many countries away from regional areas to urban environments is one of OMA's preoccupations, which will be reflected in their design for MPavilion.
"We have several other projects that are in a dense urban area and in a public space [of] freedom. In this case we're also doing a lot of research to what we call the countryside
"Urbanisation is already 50 per cent of the world, a lot of rural areas and countryside is left alone. Soon those spaces will have a new function for the city and how they will transform. Australia is in a unique place [to explore] that juxtaposition in itself ...
"I think what is really interesting to me in Australian architecture is that there's a big contrast between very small and fine things and very big statements, and there's very little in between. In other cultures there are smaller and intermediate types of architecture and then large scale. That intermediate nature is not so visible in [Australian] cities and the towns.
"It's interesting to understand that process, also the livability of the cities and the focus and what it actually means ... socially, not just physically. Architects are architects of social process and not just building process, not just the physical.
"That is not such a part of Australian architecture ... it will be interesting to create a debate and see if that can take a bigger place in architecture in Australia. That type of debate we like to engage in and steer."
