Haven’t you always wanted …?

2016 NGV Architecture Commission: M@ STUDIO Architects

Haven’t you always wanted to run through all that foam at the car lovers? Would you do it if there wasn’t another car waiting? 

The project titled ‘Haven’t you always wanted …?’ is a temporary pavilion and was the winning entry from a two stage open national competition held in 2016 by the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV). Stage 1 involved blind judging and received 93 entries from which five architects were selected to proceed to Stage 2. The competition brief asked architects “to consider innovative ways to activate one of Melbourne’s great civic spaces, the Grollo Equiset Garden with a thought‐provoking work of temporary architecture”.

‘Haven’t you always wanted…?’ is about imagining a possibility and exuberance of feeling. The pavilion is an experiment driven through two longstanding research projects developed in the RMIT Architecture, “Suburban Realism” led by Dean Boothroyd and Mark Jacques which explores new models for the expression of the civic through urban design in Melbourne’s future outer suburbs and ideas around ‘dematerialisation’ and the ‘uncertain object’ led by Vivian Mitsogianni. The project brings these ideas together with the ambition of seeing the possibilities that arise, with an equal focus on both the ideas and resultant experiential qualities.