ADAPTIONS OF THE O`BLEAK
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AN IDEA FOR MPAVILION
LOCATION: queen victoria gardens - melbourne, VIC, AUSTRALIa
"We live in a deeply concerning and incredibly consumerist driven climate in which the general consensus is throw it away and buy new.
What is more alarming is the increasing rationalisation in which "bigger is better".
The average house size in Australia is now the biggest in the world. Australia is the second highest producer of waste per person in the world - approx. 650 kgs per person. household rubbish contributes to 50% of all landfill.
An average Australian family of four people makes enough rubbish per year to completely fill a three-bedroom house from floor to ceiling. [1460m3]
We saw these alarming and deeply concerning facts as a driving factor behind our response to the pavilion and asked ourselves
how could we portray the problem through what we call ‘critical intervention’ and also provide a positive way of thinking forward?".
Given the opportunity to design the MPavillion, we approached it from the point of view of not wanting to design a pavilion in Melbourne which talked about Melbourne but a pavilion which talked about a wider issue that we felt was an important and fundamental issue in which people visiting the pavilion could relate and interact with. We also felt an opportunity such as designing a project of such calibre demanded some form of critical intervention which created discussion past the point of a ‘comfortable’ and ‘pretty’ piece of architecture.
We live in a deeply concerning and incredibly consumerist driven climate in which the general consensus is throw it away and buy new. What is more alarming is the increasing rationalisation in which “bigger is better”.
The average house size in Australia is now the biggest in the world. Australia is the second highest producer of waste per person in the world - approx. 650 kgs per person. household rubbish contributes to 50% of all landfill. An average Australian family of four people makes enough rubbish per year to completely fill a three-bedroom house from floor to ceiling. [1460m3] We saw these alarming and deeply concerning facts as a driving factor behind our response to the pavilion and asked ourselves how could we portray the problem through what we call ‘critical intervention’ and also provide a positive way of thinking forward.
We started by taking the volumetric footprint of 1460m3 [The average amount of waste [turned landfill] most families create in a year. This was translated into a pyramid of the same volume inspired by the typical suburban pitched roof as a relatable icon. We then explored the way in which this singular form could be transformed into multiple interventions catering for the various uses and pragmatic operations of the pavilion.
The pavilion starts and ends its day in the typical pyramid configuration. Whilst in this configuration, Individual users are able to directly visualise and experience first hand the sheer volume of waste that is being created per year directly related to them.
During the day and or at required times, the pavilion can be adapted through hydraulic mechanics embedded within the recycled native Australian & perforated timber skin. The hydraulic system is controlled by a small Tesla powerwall - [powerpack] that is constantly rejuvenated by solar panels embedded within the outer arms of the pavilion.
We looked to Richard Serra`s 1981 sculptural installation tilted ‘Arc” as a good precedent for a what we see as a ‘critical intervention’. The work was installed in the Jacob K Javits Federal Office Building plaza, which raised a large amount of controversy because of the ‘uncomfortable tension’ and ‘interfering nature with public use of the plaza’. In 1989 after great debate, during the night, federal workers cut the work into three pieces, removed it from its site, and turned it into scrap-metal.
The work of Claude Parent and Paul Virilio`s 1960`s ‘The Oblique Function’ in which the ground plane was tilted in order to revolutionalise the old paradigm of the vertical wall and intern the experience of such as space, also played a key role in the evolution of our pavilion.