Viewing Avant-Garde – The Pavilion Virtual Showroom by Ross Gardam
Melbourne-based designer Ross Gardam has devised a platform to allow his eponymous studio’s new collection of furniture and lighting products to be explored a little differently. Inspired by the landscape and flora of Victoria, The Pavilion bridges physical and digital worlds, existing as a virtual space to showcase the studio’s expanding portfolio of furniture and lighting.
Executed in collaboration with digital agency MR.P, The Pavilion is an inspiring project that enables visitors to view a range of avant-garde lighting and furniture in a virtual setting that fosters emotional connection between people, place and objects.
The Pavilion is inspired by Ross Gardam studio’s fascination with brutalist architecture and finds itself respectfully placed in the native surroundings of Victorian bushland. The monolithic structure opens onto this landscape, designed with careful consideration for how space is experienced. Robust, minimalist concrete as the primary material is contrasted against the soft, delicate edges of a curved roof. The expansive façade invites visitors into the courtyard of the feature atrium, directing attention toward the interplay of soft and hard features along the way.
The horizontal planes, beams and external uprights all contribute to The Pavilion’s sense of grandeur and guide the visitor experience and flow through the composition-led interior that, inevitably, turns its attention back toward the countryside. It was as much the studio’s ambition to create a place that commanded attention as it was to have it embedded in an unmistakably Australian location. As such, a biophilic consideration was imperative to the architectural design, with the inside of The Pavilion designed to frame the outside. The many portals and oversized apertures ensure you can’t escape a leafy outlook of eucalypts, ferns and other foliage.
Despite the architectural acuity, ultimately The Pavilion was conceived as a home for Ross Gardam’s latest designs. And yet it is the holistic consideration of the journey within the architecture that reflects the studio’s ethos that objects are not meant to be experienced in isolation, but rather in relation to ourselves and our surroundings. Visitors are led through an imagined space that offers scale and form on a journey of discovery. The Pavilion is depicted at various times throughout the day to allow visitors to view the generously proportioned lounging systems and sculptural lamps in a spatial setting nuanced by light, shade and mood. From room to room, Ross Gardam’s new lighting designs – Ceto Cluster, Ceto Vertical and Nebulae – are seen in situ, where viewers are shown how their dynamic forms are inspired by natural phenomena.
Ross Gardam describes The Pavilion as just the latest endeavour in the studio’s long history of experimental design thinking. Positing a new direction for contemporary craft and how it may be presented through innovative mediums, the project interprets the traditional showroom through a new virtual lens.
