Feb 14, 2013 Fujimoto’s Pavilion
The Serpentine Gallery in London has announced that multi award-winning architect and Architecture for Dog designer Sou Fujimoto will be designing the Pavilion for 2013. Previous architects have included Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei (2012), Frank Gehry (2008), the late Oscar Niemeyer (2003) and Zaha Hadid.
Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2013 • Designed by Sou Fujimoto • Indicative CGI • © Sou Fujimoto Architects
A description of the structure from Sou Fujimoto:
“For the 2013 Pavilion I propose an architectural landscape: a transparent terrain that encourages people to interact with and explore the site in diverse ways. Within the pastoral context of Kensington Gardens, I envisage the vivid greenery of the surrounding plant life woven together with a constructed geometry. A new form of environment will be created, where the natural and the man-made merge; not solely architectural nor solely natural, but a unique meeting of the two.
The Pavilion will be a delicate, three-dimensional structure, each unit of which will be composed of fine steel bars. It will form a semi-transparent, irregular ring, simultaneously protecting visitors from the elements while allowing them to remain part of the landscape. The overall footprint will be 350 square-metres and the Pavilion will have two entrances. A series of stepped terraces will provide seating areas that will allow the Pavilion to be used as a flexible, multi-purpose social space.
The delicate quality of the structure, enhanced by its semi-transparency, will create a geometric, cloud-like form, as if it were mist rising from the undulations of the park. From certain vantage points, the Pavilion will appear to merge with the classical structure of the Serpentine Gallery, with visitors suspended in space.”
Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2013 • Designed by Sou Fujimoto • Indicative CGI • © Sou Fujimoto Architects