Description:

MPavilion is Australia’s leading architectural commission, created by the Naomi Milgrom Foundation. Annually, a temporary pavilion is designed and erected in Melbourne’s Queen Victoria Gardens. Over the summer, it hosts a dynamic program of free events for the community, including: lively talks, performances, workshops, installations and kid-friendly experiences. Nüüd Studio were commissioned to design the seating for MPavilion 2021.

The brief presented to Nüüd Studio was to design seating for audiences attending MPavilion 2021’s cultural events, that would both compliment and activate the bright and joyful design of the MPavilion by MAP studio (Venice). The seating had to be weatherproof, stackable, lightweight and easy to clean and disinfect. Other key considerations were that the seating be durable and versatile enough to sustain, over 50,000 visitors, attending over 3000 events across a 5-month season. Additionally, Nüüd Studio were asked to use sustainable materials and production practices where possible.

Nüüd Studio’s response to the design brief drew inspiration from a universal shared desire to emerge from isolation and embrace, share, reconnect and repair once again. The interactive and public nature of the MPavilion motivated Nüüd Studio to consider rituals of gathering, and how their design might allay the community's apprehension towards socialising in a post-pandemic era, by bringing people together in a playful and inviting way. The chair achieves this through flexibility and adaptability. The MPavilion 2021 ‘Dancer’ chairs were first conceived as a singular circle and the individual chairs as equal divided segments of the whole . The form and name of the chair were influenced by Henri Matisse’s painting 'Dance II'. When the chairs join in an embrace, they emulate the dancers holding hands representing togetherness and solidarity with clarity and simplicity. The chairs can connect together in one direction, forming an arc, or alternatively reversed to form waves or ribbons. The chairs’ ability to detach and connect, results in endless reconfigurations encouraging MPavilion attendees to become choreographers themselves, experimenting with the way the space is used. The ‘Dancer’ chair revealed itself not only as a practical utilitarian object, but demonstrated the ability of design to influence the social interactions in a space.

It was crucial the MPavilion 2021 ‘Dancer’ chair be as sustainable as possible, leading Nüüd Studio to fabricate them from post-consumer recycled milk and juice bottles that were shredded, melted, dyed and turned into plastic sheets. This material not only proved hardy, weatherproof and easy to clean, but by working directly on the process of making the material itself, Nüüd Studio were able to have control over the exact texture, speckling ratio and colour of the chairs – ensuring they fit seamlessly into MPavilion 2021's aesthetic.

The MPavilion 2021 ‘Dancer’ chair has optimism at the core of its design, and it became an instrument of joy, unity and repair encouraging attendees to events to reconnect and engage across the spatial and cultural divides that have increasingly separated us over the past two years.