Of Significance Benjamin Bartlett

The River Pavilion, Fairfield by Paul Couch

In the beginnings off the studio Antoun, we were proffered an image of a tea cup that Spooner had received among his brother’s belonging: a piece that had no meaning or value to him beyond his brothers love of it.

The River Pavilion at Fairfield Park by Paul Couch is a public precinct composed of 3 levels: a riverside amphitheatre and adjacent concrete workshops, a covered pedestrian area at street level, and a vertically exaggerated canopy.

In 2020 the City of Yarra Council marked the River Pavilion for demolition. A campaign to protect the building and precinct ended their plea with:

At the very least, if all our attempts to prevent demolition fail, relocate the rooftop pavilion structure rather than putting it in a bin. Buildings should not be disposable.

The appeal for an imperfect survival presented the canopy as a gesture that had the potential to be read as comprehensive, even when removed from the building and landscape it was responding to.

The plight of the River Pavilion reflects the tea cup, in that it speaks to our responsibility to others, to the artefacts of communities and lives that are not ours.

The concession to give up the base of the pavilion is not about choosing what you want, but what you are willing to give up to salvage a fragment.

you have the option to keep or get rid of whatever you want, so you need to be specific about that - Spooner