Carme Pinós to Design MPavilion 2018

The announcement comes one day after 2017 MPavilion, designed by Rem Koolhaas and David Gianotten of OMA, wrapped up its four-month run in Melbourne’s Queen Victoria Gardens. Previous architects of the annual commission include Amanda Levete, Bijoy Jain, and Sean Godsell.

Naomi Milgrom AO, founder of the Naomi Milgrom Foundation, who commissioned Carme Pinós to design the pavilion, said: "Carme’s remarkable work honors the responsibility of architecture to serve a community, by creating spaces that place human experience and environment at the center of her designs."

Pinós, founder of Estudio Carme Pinós, described her honor and pleasure in gaining the commission: "It is a great responsibility to create a unique place in this special park with views over Melbourne – a city to which I have deep attachments. I am inspired by the fact that this new project will become a cultural destination for the city."

We won't see Pinós's design for 2018 MPavilion until later in the year, but this news brings to light (for me, at least) an important recent project: the Crematorio Igualada from 2016. As the name indicates, it is located at the Igualada Cemetery Park, which was realized in the 1990s with Enric Miralles. So as not to compete with, or detract from, that earlier masterpiece, the crematorium sits on a hill above the cemetery. Nevertheless, the angled planes and curved lines of the concrete structure pick up on the landscape and the adjacent cemetery – and perhaps give a hint of what to expect from Pinós in Melbourne.