Serpentine Pavilions
Jul 11, 2013 10:02:04 GMT
Post by patricklondon on Jul 11, 2013 10:02:04 GMT
No, not a flight of poetic fancy, but real buildings. Every year, the Serpentine Gallery in Hyde Park commissions an architect to build a temporary pavilion for the summer, partly as a work of art, but also to serve as the café/resting place that it doesn't have room for in its own building.
Two years ago, Peter Zumthor's "Hortus conclusus" (www.serpentinegallery.org/2011/04/serpentine_gallery_pavillion_2011_zumthor.html) invited the public through a forbidding and closed-looking exterior
into a dark and even more depressing corridor,
from which there was access to a cloistered garden that might have been there for a thousand, or even two thousand, years (such was its mediaeval, or even Roman, feel). Nothing remarkable about the plants or layout, perhaps, but all the more peaceful a sanctuary for the dramatic contrast of the fact of its enclosure - and of the fact that, as always, it was purely temporary:
Where that was hushed, peaceful and isolated from everything but the sky, last year's pavilion (by Herzog & de Meuron and Ai WeiWei -
www.serpentinegallery.org/2012/02/serpentine_gallery_pavilion_2012.html)
was shielded from the sky by a roof that held a pool of shallow water; but it was otherwise open all round, inviting people in and down to the level of previous pavilions' foundations.
What looked like a random series of levels making a range of sociable spaces for people to sit actually followed the traces of the pavilion's predecessors. The whole thing was surfaced in cork, which the architects' art-speak description praised for its "haptic and olfactory qualities" (I think they meant people like the touch and smell). Certainly it felt warm, comfortable and safe for children to tumble against, and there were plenty of people intrigued by it and taking advantage of the space to eat their lunch, to chat or just to read and ponder.
Having encouraged visitors in and down in previous years, this year Sou Fujimoto invites you up into its cloud of white-painted metal tubing, with the aim of creating "an architectural landscape: a transparent terrain that encourages people to interact with and explore the site in diverse ways."
www.serpentinegallery.org/2013/02/sou_fujimoto_to_design_serpentine_gallery_pavilion_2013.html
It's not quite the gigantic playground climbing-frame that it appears to be, but there are seemingly random armoured-glass steps to various vantage points, and to avoid too much health-and-safety confusion, it is fairly clear where there is solid support and where are the gaps that you can't actually step on by accident:
You can use the various levels to just sit:
or to gaze through the maze of struts, and plexiglass discs to keep the rain off, down to the posh coffee-stand beneath:
or to get your bearings by looking at the Serpentine Gallery itself:
In fine weather, it certainly makes for an airy experience, and different visitors found their own ways of amusing themselves with it:
Two years ago, Peter Zumthor's "Hortus conclusus" (www.serpentinegallery.org/2011/04/serpentine_gallery_pavillion_2011_zumthor.html) invited the public through a forbidding and closed-looking exterior
into a dark and even more depressing corridor,
from which there was access to a cloistered garden that might have been there for a thousand, or even two thousand, years (such was its mediaeval, or even Roman, feel). Nothing remarkable about the plants or layout, perhaps, but all the more peaceful a sanctuary for the dramatic contrast of the fact of its enclosure - and of the fact that, as always, it was purely temporary:
Where that was hushed, peaceful and isolated from everything but the sky, last year's pavilion (by Herzog & de Meuron and Ai WeiWei -
www.serpentinegallery.org/2012/02/serpentine_gallery_pavilion_2012.html)
was shielded from the sky by a roof that held a pool of shallow water; but it was otherwise open all round, inviting people in and down to the level of previous pavilions' foundations.
What looked like a random series of levels making a range of sociable spaces for people to sit actually followed the traces of the pavilion's predecessors. The whole thing was surfaced in cork, which the architects' art-speak description praised for its "haptic and olfactory qualities" (I think they meant people like the touch and smell). Certainly it felt warm, comfortable and safe for children to tumble against, and there were plenty of people intrigued by it and taking advantage of the space to eat their lunch, to chat or just to read and ponder.
Having encouraged visitors in and down in previous years, this year Sou Fujimoto invites you up into its cloud of white-painted metal tubing, with the aim of creating "an architectural landscape: a transparent terrain that encourages people to interact with and explore the site in diverse ways."
www.serpentinegallery.org/2013/02/sou_fujimoto_to_design_serpentine_gallery_pavilion_2013.html
It's not quite the gigantic playground climbing-frame that it appears to be, but there are seemingly random armoured-glass steps to various vantage points, and to avoid too much health-and-safety confusion, it is fairly clear where there is solid support and where are the gaps that you can't actually step on by accident:
You can use the various levels to just sit:
or to gaze through the maze of struts, and plexiglass discs to keep the rain off, down to the posh coffee-stand beneath:
or to get your bearings by looking at the Serpentine Gallery itself:
In fine weather, it certainly makes for an airy experience, and different visitors found their own ways of amusing themselves with it:
