This week, the Naomi Milgrom Foundation, a Melbourne, Australia–based nonprofit that supports public architecture and design projects, will officially announce that architect Bijoy Jain, founder of Studio Mumbai, in India, will design the third-annual MPavilion at the Queen Victoria Gardens in Melbourne, Australia.
The announcement follows the closing on Feb. 7 of MPavilion 2015's four-month run at the garden. Designed and constructed by London studio AL_A, the temporary structure featured 13-foot-tall carbon fiber columns topped with translucent petals in various sizes fitted with LEDs that put on musically synchronized light shows each night.
“I’m honoured to ... design the next MPavilion in Melbourne. I want it to be a symbol of the elemental nature of communal structures." Jain said in a press release. "Like Naomi, I see MPavilion as a place of engagement: a space to discover the essentials of the world—and of oneself.”
Jain earned an M.Arch. from Washington University in St. Louis in 1990, and went on to found Studio Mumbai in 1995, after returning to India. His installation, "Work-Place," was featured in the 2010 Venice Biennale and received a special mention by that year's jury. Following the Biennale, the work was featured in the 2010 exhibition “1:1 Architects Build Small Spaces” at the Victoria and Albert Museum, in London. Jain's most recent projects include a weaving workshop in India called the Ganka Maki Textile Studio; the Onomichi Community Center, in Japan; and a hotel wellness center in France. In 2014, he was awarded the Grande Medaille d’Or from the Academie D’Architecture in Paris.
MPavilion 2016 will open to the public 5 Oct. 2016 until 5 Feb. 2017.
