Preserve the Pavilion is a community-led, independent initiative supporting efforts to retain MPavilion 10 by Tadao Ando in the Queen Victoria Garden. The initiative was launched in March, 2025 by PARABOLICA director Jasmine Placentino.

Photographed by Pier Carthew, this series of images documents the MPavilion in its dormant state – caught in a moment of stillness between use and uncertainty. This modest structure, realised with extraordinary precision and intention, at risk of being lost to time.

While the MPavilion program was always temporal by design, this pavilion represents something more: a dialogue between the people of Melbourne and one of the most influential architects of our time. A space for discourse and the coming together of people in the cultural context of increasing polarity. It situates the city – however briefly – within the broader continuum of architectural thought and culture. To erase it would be to cut short a conversation barely begun.

The movement to preserve MPavilion 10 is a call for reflection: on how we assign value, on how we care for our cultural artefacts, and on what it means to sustain – not just environmentally, but intellectually, emotionally, spatially.

In June 2025, the Future Melbourne Committee voted to extend the life of Tadao Ando’s MPavilion in the Queen Victoria Gardens until 2030.