The future pavilion is already the fourth in the MPavilion program: every year a temporary structure designed by a prominent "international" architect opens in Queen Victoria Gardens, surrounded by museums and memorials, and serves as a platform for various cultural events. This architectural program was created and financed by the Naomi Milgrom Foundation, a prominent Australian entrepreneur, but the very idea of a temporary summer (in the case of Australia - an autumn-winter) structure with such a function and interesting architecture is clearly borrowed from the project of the Serpentine Gallery in London (however, Serpentine has followers not only in Melbourne, but in many other cities of the world).
Koolhaas and Janotten proposed to create a pavilion with two "stands", together resembling an amphitheater. At the same time, one will be stationary, inscribed in a hill, planted with 12 species of native plants, and the other will be able to rotate around its axis, then becoming a stage, then providing places for spectators. Architects believe that in this way their construction will not only serve as a space for performances, but also become a performer itself.
The ceiling is a two-meter-thick aluminum-clad steel structure with the necessary infrastructure for various events: it is planned to hold public discussions, concerts, master classes on architecture and design, and so on in the pavilion.
Construction is scheduled to begin in August, with opening scheduled for mid-Melbourne Spring, October 3. The pavilion will stay in the park until February 4, 2018. In contrast to its London “prototype”, where the pavilions are finally sold from a charity auction, in the MPavilion program these structures are eventually located in different parts of the city - already on a permanent basis. However, it has not yet been decided where the work of OMA will be staged.
