MPavilion  

MPavilion is proud to announce that the commission for our 2021 MPavilion has been awarded to international architecture, urbanism and design practice, MAP studio (Venice).

MAP studio—an architecture, urbanism and design practice based in Venice, Italy—is renowned for responding to existing sites in a way that is both sensitive and celebratory. It’s an approach that will be especially poignant as MPavilion 2021 returns to its original home on Boon Wurrung land in the Queen Victoria Gardens.

A work more than two years in the making, MAP studio’s MPavilion was originally slated for construction in 2020, with progress being postponed as the world responded to the COVID-19 crisis. But now, after wrapping our logistically flexible 2020 season, MPavilion can recommence work with MAP studio to bring its vision to fruition. Led by architects Francesco Magnani and Traudy Pelzel (from whose surnames the name MAP is derived), the studio will reignite the flame of global partnership at MPavilion with its joyful iteration of Melbourne’s favourite cultural laboratory.

“We have followed the sensitive, deeply site-responsive work of MAP studio for some time, and couldn’t be more excited to see their pavilion spring to life in our first season back in the Queen Victoria Gardens,” said MPavilion founder, Naomi Milgrom AC. “In helping to reestablish and strengthen architectural dialogues between Melbourne and the rest of the world in the wake of the pandemic, this partnership with MAP studio is a great source of pride and celebration for the Naomi Milgrom Foundation and MPavilion.”

Francesco Magnani and Traudy Pelzel have also expressed their excitement about the brief. “As an open-access, democratic space, MPavilion performs the crucial role of inviting people from all walks of life to engage in conversations around design, architecture and culture, and take an active part in the meaningful development of their own civic spaces. MAP studio is honoured to play such an important role in the cultural life of Melbourne and the reanimation of its city centre after lockdown. We thank the Naomi Milgrom Foundation for this wonderful opportunity to reopen the channels of creative exchange between our cities.”

Located at Palazzo Foscarini in the historic centre of Venice, MAP studio is a young and exciting practice that considers architecture to be a process of constant dialogue, between client and creative, past and present, environment and inhabitant. 

Currently working on the refurbishment of greenhouses in Querini Park, Vincenza, the outfitting of the National Museum of Musical Instruments, Rome, and the restoration of Carlo Scarpa’s Balboni House, Venice, MAP studio specialises in urban renewal and the sympathetic transformation of existing structures and spaces. This is exemplified in works like their renovation of the Porta Nuova Tower in the Venice Arsenale (winner of the 2011 Pietro Torta Award, and nominated for the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture—Mies van der Rohe Award), their restoration of a Ferrara Farmhouse (nominated for the 2015 Italian Architecture Gold Medal Award), and their development of the Tramway Terminal in Piazzale Roma, Venice (winner of the 2018 Italian Architect Award). MAP studio has exhibited work at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, and was celebrated for its Asplund Pavilion at Vatican Chapels—the first pavilion of the Holy See at the 16th Venice Biennale of Architecture.

Design and build details of MAP studio’s MPavilion will be revealed in July 2021, so stay tuned for more on this exciting architectural partnership.