How fortunate we are to have visited Tadao Ando’s architectural masterpiece, the MPavilion 10 in Melbourne’s Queen Victoria Gardens.

An initiative of the Naomi Milgrom Foundation, MPavilion is Australia’s leading architecture commission and design festival. Every year since 2014, eminent architects from Australia and across the world have been invited to design a meeting place (MPavilion) for sites throughout Melbourne. From this MPavilion, a five-month design festival of free events invites visitors to consider how architecture, art and design can change lives.

When each season draws to a close, its MPavilion is gifted to the people of Victoria and relocated to a permanent home in the community where it can remain as a catalyst for conversation.
Pritzker Prize Laureate Tadao Ando’s architectural style is deeply rooted in a philosophy of simplicity and functionality. His work often incorporates elements of traditional Japanese architecture while embracing a modernist sensibility, creating a dialogue between the past and the present.

Ando’s MPavilion 10 is a structure that responds directly to landscape striving for spatial purity by curating simple geometric shapes such as circles and squares to create architectural form.

Intended as a space for reflection and interaction, it is a masterful study of geometry, proportion, balance, light, and craftsmanship. Concrete walls partially enclose the space to form a sanctuary reminiscent of a Japanese walled garden.

On his project, Tadao Ando said “The design for the MPavilion began with a desire to find a scene of eternity within the public gardens of the Queen Victoria Gardens in Melbourne. Eternal, not in material or structure, but in the memory of a landscape that will continue to live in people’s hearts.”

We highly recommend a visit to MPavilion, open daily until 28 March, 2024.