2021 National Commendation for Small Project Architecture

Jury citation

Jackalope Pavilion exquisitely exploits the tension between the transience of the exhibited decorative arts and the permanence of utilitarian form. The opportunity to base a commercial design around an impermanent artwork is rare, and rarer still is the architectural skill to deliver the temporary in a temporal pavilion that harks back to sacred experience. The structure’s decoration and pragmatics defer to the art – an extraordinary 100-square-metre expanse of continuous rainfall – in a surprising compositional offering that rejects the now-familiar mute art box. The architecture celebrates its fleeting position in St Kilda, as the enveloping cloud of whitened scaffold melds with the typical Melbourne sky. Accomplished on many levels, this work by March Studio is as personal as it is universal, offering architecture as art in a fulsome and illusionary experience of space.

Project credits

Architect: March Studio; Project team: Rodney Eggleston, Julien Ybert, Toby McElwaine, Julian Canterbury, Charlie Lane; Builder: Cod Build; Construction manager: Medley Property Group; Engineer: Wood and Grieve Engineers; Building surveyor: Grimbos Building Surveyors; Other consultants: Random International, Studio Ongarato, Bluline Projects.

Jackalope Pavilion by March Studio is located in St Kilda, Victoria, on the land of the Yaluk-ut Weelam clan of the Boon Wurrung.