MPavilion Glenn Murcutt
There is a stillness that comes over you inside Glenn Murcutt’s MPavilion. By stillness, I mean a lack of unharmonious noise, visually and acoustically, as if the architect has hit pause on the space–time continuum, allowing you to fully take in the spectacle of Melbourne’s city skyline, with the greenness of the Queen Victoria Gardens in the foreground.
Among the Naomi Milgrom Foundation’s MPavilions, and indeed in the evolution of modern pavilions, Murcutt’s is unique. In Pavilion propositions, authors John Macarthur, Susan Holden, Ashley Paine and Wouter Davidts frame the pavilion through the existential question, “Is architecture art?”1 Indeed, many pavilions around the world are artful objects that form backdrops to cultural programs for visual arts institutions; sometimes, this creates an inherent tension between their function as event spaces and their whimsical form-making.
Murcutt’s pavilion, in its arresting simplicity, does not conform. While it is no less artful, the artistry lies in the coalescence of its pure architectural expression and functionalism. Nothing is there that doesn’t have a purpose. As Murcutt explains, architecture is a science, and the process of design is akin to
