MPavilion

After the disruption to MDW 2020, Home Made is returning with a new impetus as we emerge from the experience of Covid-19 lockdowns in an altered relationship with our homes. As vacancies rise in investor grade apartments, and city dwellers look to the regions for an improved quality of life, what is the future of compact living in Melbourne?

Inspired by the last decade of local housing innovation, which is unique in Australia, this exhibition explores what a more community-centred, sustainable model of housing might look like, and how we can provide attractive, generous lifestyles for all incomes and household types in our urban centres.

The exhibition presents a survey of housing projects both built and unbuilt, which reflect new approaches to finance, design, development, and shared living, including by Nightingale Housing, Assemble, Property Collectives, Tripple, and the Third Way. Together, these diverse models suggest a more optimistic and inclusive vision of how housing can shape our city.

Home Made will open with a special launch event presented in collaboration with New Architects Melbourne. Focusing on what we can learn from the communities making these projects home, a panel of residents will share their personal experiences and reflections, revealing what happens when design intention encounters the complex realities of everyday life.

Working with MPavilion’s MRelay format, the curators of UPTOWN present an actioned-packed session of speakers primed to discuss the role of artists and designers in Melbourne’s future. UPTOWN co-curators, Fiona Scanlan and Robert Buckingham, join forces with MPavilion and Turning Circle Collective to explore how artists and designers have contributed to the cultural and economic life of Melbourne in the past and how they can help Melbourne regain its mojo.

'UPTOWN: An art exhibition for out city' was devised to reactivate the city centre and unite retailers, visual artists, property owners and the City of Melbourne. The exhibition (15 December 2020 – 28 February 2021) reimagined the top of Bourke Street as a 24/7 outdoor gallery and used vacant shops, windows, architecture and laneways as the frame for a very different type of visual art exhibition.

Speakers include:

Robert Buckingham (creative director and co-curator UPTOWN)

Fiona Scanlan (fashion designer, retailer, ceramicist and co-curator UPTOWN)

Lord Mayor Sally Capp (City of Melbourne Mayor)

Fleur Watson (curator, academic, director of Open House Melbourne)

Millie Cattlin (architect, creative precinct creator – member Turning Circle Collective)

Barrie Barton (director, Studio Right Angle, place maker)

Su san Cohn (artist and City resident)

Michael Trudgeon (architect, designer and educator – member Turning Circle Collective)

Eugenia Lim (artist, lecturer VCA)

Rory Hyde (architect, curator, formerly head of Architecture Dept at V&A)

Wendy Lasica (creative producer and urban planner – member Turning Circle Collective)

Athiqah Ummi Salma (M_Curator’s member and Signal Issues producer)

Kent Morris (artist and curator)

We all experience the world through a body, a body that has certain powers, and certain constraints.

Three Bodies is a short documentary film by Dorothy Allen-Pickard, commissioned by Molonglo as part of their upcoming Designing with Difference publication. It draws out an embodied relationship with the built environment through the experience of three different people, who each take us on a journey from the interior of their spaces, outside, and into the world.

The screening will be followed by a panel discussion that further explores how the built environment can either be a pathway or a barrier to community, opportunity, and pleasure, depending on how places are designed, and who they are designed for.

An expert panel discussion on the Social Housing future of Victoria, and how to make it happen.

2020 turned out to be unexpectedly tough, with few opportunities for the housing sector to come together. But it also saw the Victorian Government commit unprecedented levels of funding and support to increase social and affordable housing supply across Victoria and help stimulate the State’s economy.

A new Departmental structure was created - Homes Victoria, the $5.3bn Big Housing Build was announced, a ten year Housing Strategy is currently out for public consultation and a raft of other programs and shovel-ready social housing projects are now in the pipeline. Could one of the positive impacts of COVID-19 be a turning point in the delivery of social and affordable housing supply across Victoria?

A conversation around White Cube, the Dutch documentary by Renzo Martens that features OMA—the architecture studio behind MPavilion Monash.

Hear from Congalese artist Cedart Tamasala, dutch documentary maker Renzo Martens, our 2018 architect David Gianotten, Congalese architect Arsene Ijambo and artist Eléonore Hellio in conversation with urban planner and architectural theorist Helen Runting on the making of the documentary 'White Cube'.

ABOUT THE FILM

White Cube follows the work of Cercle d’Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise (CATPC), a plantation workers’ cooperative based on a former Unilever plantation in Lusanga, Democratic Republic of Congo. From the boardrooms of Unilever, to elite museums and galleries across the world, to the exhausted plantations of The Congo, the film documents the CATPC’s success in ending the destructive system of monoculture on their lands with a combination of art and activism. In moving viewers between the violence of the plantation system and the aesthetic ‘civility’ of the white cube, the film highlights a fundamental question: can museums ever hope to be inclusive when no reparations have yet been paid to the plantation workers who financed—and in some cases continue to finance—the very foundations of these institutions?

What’s the art of science education and the place of art-making in science?

Learn from leading science educators and artists about their study of nature, and how lessons from their research can shape our future.

Featuring insights from Melbourne Zoo experts.

Surroundings offers a fresh look at our relationship with space, the environment and each other. When we are in harmony with our surroundings we can be at peace with ourselves. Hosted by Triple R’s Lauren Taylor and Simon Winkler, Surroundings is a series of monthly talks with individuals whose work and imaginations provide a new blueprint for cities and communities. Guests will describe the new frontiers of environmental design, surveillance and the possibilities of collaboration with artificial intelligence. These talks explore why now more than ever it’s critical not to take our surroundings for granted.

While there is still much work to be done on improving design processes so that they centre the voices of the Traditional Owners, not every project has the capacity to engage. So, when we can’t engage, what can we do to ensure we are working in alignment with Country and its values? In conversation with Parbin-ata Carolyn Briggs, senior Elder of the Boon Wurrung People, this talk explores what we can still do for Country when we can’t engage.

MPavilion’s fourth annual BLAKitecture forum brings together Indigenous built environment practitioners on the Yaluk-ut Weelam land of the Boon Wurrung people. The forum aims to centralise Indigenous voices in conversations about architecture, the representation of histories, and the present and future states of our built environments.

BLAKitecture 2020/21 is curated by MPavilion’s program consultant Sarah Lynn Rees.

Listen in to a series of conversations led by beloved Triple R broadcasters Lauren Taylor and Simon Winkler in conversation with our Walsh Street Music artists.

For the final installment of our Walsh Street Music program, Gregor work his musical magic in a room of legendary architect Robin Boyd's famous Walsh St home. Melbourne prog-pop eccentric Gregor released his debut album Silver Drop via Chapter Music in late 2018, taking the restless, idiosyncratic spirit of his previous sketches and tunes and applying it to his own interior emotional world. Spacious and delicate, but peppered with acerbic pop moments and extended, loping grooves, the album drew together elements of Gregor’s eclectic influences, filtered through his increasingly personal vision. In 2019, Gregor was nominated for Best Album and Best Solo Artist in the Music Victoria Awards. His second album Destiny is due for release in November 2020.

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MPavilion & the Robin Boyd Foundation bring you a six part series of live performances from the iconic Walsh Street house. Directed by Freya Esders and shot by award-winning cinematographer Edward Goldner, the series will place an eclectic roster of Melbourne’s favourite musicians in all corners of this architectural masterpiece.

The Walsh Street Music Program features the soulful multi-instrumentalist and proud Kuku Yalanji, Jirrbal and Torres Strait Islander woman Kee’ahn, Chinese/Australian composer and guzheng virtuoso Mindy Meng Wang, the beautifully melancholic and ethereal Sweet Whirl, Sudanese born Melbourne bred rapper BabyT, the lo-fi soundscapes of unground cult lovers Sleeper & Snake, and finally Melbourne prog pop eccentric Gregor.

Walsh St house is the dwelling that Australian architectural giant Robin Boyd designed as his own family home. As an exemplar of modernist Australian architecture that continues to influence architectural thinking, the house has been the subject of extensive media coverage both nationally and internationally. The house remains unchanged from the time it was first designed and occupied by the Boyd Family in 1959, furnished with pieces designed by Boyd’s associates Grant Featherston, Clement Meadmore and others and then photographed by Mark Strizic. Now home of the Robin Boyd Foundation, the heritage icon provides a unique insight into Melbourne’s design leaders of the 50s and 60s.

Listen in to a series of conversations led by beloved Triple R broadcasters Lauren Taylor and Simon Winkler in conversation with our Walsh Street Music artists.

For part five of our Walsh Street Music program, Baby T occupies a seat in Robin Boyd's iconic home, filling the walls with his original style and emotive lyrical comprehension. The Sudanese-born, Melbourne-bred rapper grew up in the western suburbs before going on to make an impressive name for himself in Melbourne’s underground hip hop scene. With his hit single “Lingo” streaming up too 150k on YouTube and featuring on the last ever Juice WRLD Australian tour, BabyT has gone from recording in his closet to shaking up the Australian rap scene.

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MPavilion & the Robin Boyd Foundation bring you a six part series of live performances from the iconic Walsh Street house. Directed by Freya Esders and shot by award-winning cinematographer Edward Goldner, the series will place an eclectic roster of Melbourne’s favourite musicians in all corners of this architectural masterpiece.

The Walsh Street Music Program features the soulful multi-instrumentalist and proud Kuku Yalanji, Jirrbal and Torres Strait Islander woman Kee’ahn, Chinese/Australian composer and guzheng virtuoso Mindy Meng Wang, the beautifully melancholic and ethereal Sweet Whirl, Sudanese born Melbourne bred rapper BabyT, the lo-fi soundscapes of unground cult lovers Sleeper & Snake, and finally Melbourne prog pop eccentric Gregor.

Walsh St house is the dwelling that Australian architectural giant Robin Boyd designed as his own family home. As an exemplar of modernist Australian architecture that continues to influence architectural thinking, the house has been the subject of extensive media coverage both nationally and internationally. The house remains unchanged from the time it was first designed and occupied by the Boyd Family in 1959, furnished with pieces designed by Boyd’s associates Grant Featherston, Clement Meadmore and others and then photographed by Mark Strizic. Now home of the Robin Boyd Foundation, the heritage icon provides a unique insight into Melbourne’s design leaders of the 50s and 60s.

Listen in to a series of conversations led by beloved Triple R broadcasters Lauren Taylor and Simon Winkler in conversation with our Walsh Street Music artists.

For part four of our Walsh Street Music program, Sleeper & Snake fill a room in Robin Boyd's iconic home with their warbled vocals, fizzed improvised interludes, and shifting layers of sound.

Sleeper & Snake are duo Amy Hill (Terry, Primo, Constant Mongrel) and Al Montfort (Terry, Total Control, Lower Plenty, Dick Diver etc…). Setting a different pace to previous projects, Sleeper & Snake rest their homespun vignettes of skewed harmony and wistful yet pointed lyrical pep in a nest saxophone, synthesisers, drum machine, acoustic guitar and strings.

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MPavilion & the Robin Boyd Foundation bring you a six part series of live performances from the iconic Walsh Street house. Directed by Freya Esders and shot by award-winning cinematographer Edward Goldner, the series will place an eclectic roster of Melbourne’s favourite musicians in all corners of this architectural masterpiece.

The Walsh Street Music Program features the soulful multi-instrumentalist and proud Kuku Yalanji, Jirrbal and Torres Strait Islander woman Kee’ahn, Chinese/Australian composer and guzheng virtuoso Mindy Meng Wang, the beautifully melancholic and ethereal Sweet Whirl, Sudanese born Melbourne bred rapper BabyT, the lo-fi soundscapes of unground cult lovers Sleeper & Snake, and finally Melbourne prog pop eccentric Gregor.

Walsh St house is the dwelling that Australian architectural giant Robin Boyd designed as his own family home. As an exemplar of modernist Australian architecture that continues to influence architectural thinking, the house has been the subject of extensive media coverage both nationally and internationally. The house remains unchanged from the time it was first designed and occupied by the Boyd Family in 1959, furnished with pieces designed by Boyd’s associates Grant Featherston, Clement Meadmore and others and then photographed by Mark Strizic. Now home of the Robin Boyd Foundation, the heritage icon provides a unique insight into Melbourne’s design leaders of the 50s and 60s.