Tadao Ando

Tadao Ando's MPavilion is set to remain in Melbourne's Queen Victoria Gardens until June 2025, after City of Melbourne approved a request from the Naomi Milgrom Foundation to extend the temporary structure.

Each year the MPavilion installations are dismantled after a summer season of programming and relocated elsewhere in Melbourne.

Ando's pavilion comprises two right-angled concrete walls, offset from each other to form a square with two entrances, and an interior reminiscent of a Japanese walled garden with a reflection pool. A 14.4-metre-wide aluminium-clad parasol supported by a circular concrete column partially shelters enclosure.

"It's the only piece of [Ando's] architecture that's in Australia, so that in itself is remarkable and deserving of extension of its presence in our city," said lord mayor Sally Capp, who moved the motion to support the extension at a meeting of the Future Melbourne Committee on 9 April.

"[The pavilion] has had so many challenges to it being built and to it being dismantled. In fact, in its current form, it will never, ever appear again. So giving Melburnians and this city and our community an opportunity to continue to value and utilise this extraordinary space is important and deserving of support."

Deputy lord mayor Nicholas Reece also commented on the "extraordinary design," and added that "the build quality is absolutely world class."

In its request to the council, Naomi Milgrom Foundation include several testimonials of support from Melbourne's architecture and design elite, include the Victorian government architect Jill Garner, Australian Institute of Architects CEO Cameron Bruhn, architect Peter Maddison, garden designer Paul Bangay and architectural photographer John Gollings.