Melbourne – The inaugural MPavilion, a temporary pavilion in Victoria Gardens, has officially opened to the public and is home to a four-month festival of architecture, design and creative arts.
The steel structure, designed by internationally renowned architect Sean Godsell, is formed of panels that lift and open when daylight breaks in the morning and close at night when the sun sets, conceived to imitate a blooming flower. During the day, the panels provide shelter and shade from the sunlight.
MPavilion will be open until 1 February 2015 and over the next four months will host more than 100 free events with 125 collaborators from a variety of arts and design disciplines.
The MPavilion is a new architecture commission initiated by the Naomi Milgrom Foundation and supported by the City of Melbourne and the Victorian State government. Each year for the next four years, an architect will be commissioned to design a temporary pavilion for the gardens that will act as a platform for a programme of free design and arts events.
For more examples of how the poetic properties of nature are being emulated through design, read our Kinetic Nature Design Direction.