Located within the skylight of Level Two’s Designer Precinct at Melbourne Central, the new Kisho Prize installation will be officially unveiled on Thursday, 3 April. The six-by-three installation has been designed by emerging Melbourne-based artist Hamish Munro. It is an homage to Melbourne’s design culture and Kisho Kurokawa, the famous Japanese designer who designed the Melbourne Central building in the 1980s.

Munro’s design concept was chosen by a panel of judges, including Melbourne Central’s General Manager, Justin Shannon, Melbourne Central Cultural Correspondent Lucy Feagins, RMIT’s Head of School of Art, Professor Jeremy Diggle and art and design journalist Dylan Rainforth.

The installation is an inflatable sculpture fabricated from a thin, digitally printed nylon fabric, surrounding a steel armature that is filled with air. It responds to constant change in its surrounding environment, acting like a living organism. The visitors will form a part of data, which will be collected and translated into a computer program that controls a shift in formation within the sponge-like sculpture. Thus incoming and outgoing visitors will, though unknowingly, alter the shape and form of the installation.

Describing his work, Munro said, “Melbournian’s movements and choices contribute to the city’s growth and ever changing architectural landscape. As they move in and throughout shared spaces, new areas of congregation within the city are activated.

These spaces can be seen as new pods or modules of life, connecting to pre-existing pathways, lanes, buildings or streets. My vision of Melbourne’s city is a constant evolution driven by the people who live in it, which is reflected in my proposed artwork.”

The design draws inspiration from Kisho Kurokawa’s Nakagin Capsule Tower in Tokyo, completed in 1972.

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