Four satellite summer houses by international architects add to bumper year
Bjarke Ingels鈥 Serpentine Pavilion opens this week along with four pop-up summer houses surrounding it in Kensington Gardens.
It is the first time more than one pavilion - and more than one architect - have been part of the annual series which began in 2000 with a Zaha Hadid-designed structure.
This year鈥檚 main pavilion - a towering 300sq m twisted pyramid of empty boxes - was designed by Ingels鈥 practice BIG.
It fills the lawn in front of the main Serpentine Gallery and was conceived as an 鈥渦nzipped wall鈥 switching from straight line to 3D space housing a cafe and able to host the Park Nights performance programme.
The four 25sq m summer houses are scattered around it, all about a minute鈥檚 walk. They were designed by the UK鈥檚 Asif Khan, Hungarian-born Yona Friedman, US/German practice Barkow Leibinger and former OMA architect Kunl茅 Adeyemi, principal of Amsterdam-based NL脡.
The brief was to reference William Kent鈥檚 1734 Queen Caroline鈥檚 Temple, a classical summer house just north of the main Serpentine Gallery.
Asif Khan鈥檚 design is inspired by the fact that the temple was positioned to catch the sunlight from the Serpentine lake.
Kunl茅 Adeyemi鈥檚 summer house is an inverse replica of the temple - a 鈥渢ribute to its robust form, space and material, recomposed into a new sculptural object鈥.
Barkow Leibinger was inspired by another, now extinct, 18th-century pavilion also designed by William Kent, which rotated and offered 360-degree views of the park.
And Yona Friedman鈥檚 summer house is a modular structure that can be assembled and disassembled in different formations.
Postscript
The 2016 Serpentine Pavilion and summer houses are open in Kensington Gardens from June 10 - October 9. Entry is free.
No comments yet