Serpentine Pavilion 2016

The Serpentine unveiled today the designs for its expanded Architecture Programme for 2016: the 16th annual Pavilion designed by Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) (Copenhagen/New York) and four newly commissioned Summer Houses by Kunlé Adeyemi – NLÉ (Amsterdam/Lagos), Barkow Leibinger (Berlin/New York), Yona Friedman (Paris) and Asif Khan (London). The Summer Houses are inspired by Queen Caroline’s Temple, a classical style summer house built in 1734 and a stone’s throw from the Serpentine Gallery.

Introducing contemporary architecture to a wider audience, the Serpentine Architecture Programme present s a unique exhibition of contemporary international architecture in the built form, rather than through an exhibition of models, drawings and plans. Each of the five architects, aged between 36 and 93, have not completed a permanent structure in the UK. The Serpentine Pavilion, designed by Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), is an “unzipped wall” that is transformed from straight line to three – dimensional space, creating a dramatic structure that by day houses a café and free family activities and by night becomes a space for the Serpentine’s Park Nights programme.

Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG): “For the Serpentine Pavilion 2016, we have attempted to design a structure that embodies multiple aspects that are often perceived as opposites: a structure that is free – form yet rigorous, modular yet sculptural, both transparent and opaque, both solid box and blob. We decided to work with one of the most basic elements of architecture: the brick wall. Rather than clay bricks or stone blocks, the wall is erected from extruded fibreglass frames stacked on top of each other. The wall is then pulled apart to form a cavity within it, to house the events of the Pavilion’s programme. This unzipping of the wall turns the line into a surface, transforming the wall into a space. A complex three-dimensional environment is created which can be explored and experienced in a variety of ways, inside and outside. At the top, the wall appears like a straight line, while the bottom, it forms a sheltered valley at the entrance of the Pavilion and an undulating hillside towards the Park.

Kunlé Adeyemi’s Summer House is an inverse replica of Queen Caroline’s Temple – a tribute to its robust form, space and material, recomposed into a new sculptural object. “With a play on architecture,” write the architects, “our design aims to fulfil the simple primary purpose of a Summer House: a space for shelter and relaxation. By rotating the Temple’s interior void space, we expose the structure’s neo-classical plan, proportions and architectural form. Using prefabricated building blocks assembled from sandstone similar to the ones used in building the Temple, our abstracted forms come together to create a room, a doorway and a window for people to interact with the building, the environment and with one another.”

Barkow Leibinger were inspired by another, now extinct, 18th Century pavilion also designed by William Kent, which rotated and offered 360 degree views of the Park. Barkow Leibinger state: “Standing free with all its sides visible, and conceived as a series of undulating structural bands, our Summer House is reminiscent of a blind contour drawing (a drawing executed without lifting the pencil up from the paper and only looking at the subject). The horizontal banding recalls the layered coursing of Queen Caroline’s Temple, despite its idiosyncratic nature.”

Yona Friedman’s Summer House takes the form of a modular structure that can be assembled and disassembled in different formations and builds upon the architect’s pioneering project La Ville Spatiale (Spatial City) begun in the late 1950s. As Yona Friedman explains, “The Serpentine Summer House is a ‘space-chain’ structure that constitutes a fragment of a larger grid structure, originally conceived for La Ville Spatiale. It is a modular structure that can be disassembled and assembled in different formations and compositions.” 

Asif Khan’s design is inspired by the fact that Queen Caroline’s Temple was positioned in a way that it would allow it to catch the sunlight from the Serpentine lake. “In our Summer House a polished metal platform and roof provide an intimate experience of this lost moment for the visitor,” explains Asif Khan, “Three ‘rooms’ of differing spatial quality gently enfilade tog ether like those in the Temple. These are articulated by an undulating line of timber staves which create enclosure and direct views. The ground is a continuous gravel landscape punctuated by stepping stones, subtly elevating and measuring the visitor’s approach when entering the interior. As the structure meets the gravel it gently blends the horizontal and vertical, to appear as if the Summer House might have grown out of the ground.”

10 June – 9 October 2016
Serpentine Pavilion 2016
Serpentine Galleries
Kensington Gardens, London