The commission for the Serpentine Gallery’s summer pavilion in Kensington Gardens, London, is probably one of the most coveted amongst the who’s who of world architecture. Architects including Peter Zumthor, Jean Nouvel, SANAA, Herzog & de Meuron, Sou Fujimoto and Zaha Hadid have held this honour.
But this year it is not just the usual pavilion: four other architects have also been appointed to each design a summerhouse, or folly, adjacent to the pavilion.
The Dane Bjarke Ingils from BIG (Bjarke Ingils Group), is the designer of the pavilion, while the Nigerian Kunlé Adeyemi, the firm Barkow Leibinger from Berlin, Parisian Yona Friedman and the Brit Asif Khan will see to the ‘fun’.
Serpentine Summer House 2016 designed by Kunle Adeyemi NLE. Picture: serpentinegalleries.org
Serpentine Summer House 2016. Asif Khan. Picture: serpentinegalleries.org
Serpentine Summer House 2016. Barkow Leibinger. Picture: serpentinegalleries.org
Serpentine Summer House 2016. Yona Friedman. Picture: serpentinegalleries.org
This new development is partly because, after fifteen years, the programme had to develop, according to the two gallery directors Julia Peyton-Jones and Hans Ulrich Obrist.
It will also be Peyton-Jones last year with the gallery.
In a statement, the follies or summerhouses of approximately 25m2 each, is said to be in honour of a nearby Eighteenth Century summerhouse – Queen Caroline’s temple, dating from 1734.
Bjarke Ingils caught the eye with designs such as 8 House, a mixed-housing development of more than 61 000m2 in the shape of a figure eight; a waste-to-energy terrain in Copenhagen which doubles as ski-slope; a highrise building (West 57th Street) in New York; the national art gallery in Nuuk, Iceland; and the Kimball Art Centre in Utah in the VSA.
2016 Serpentine Pavilion Designed by Bjarket Ingels Group. Picture: serpentinegalleries.org
According to their website the Serpentine Pavilion is one of the ten most visited architecture and design exhibitions in the world.
Read more:
http://www.serpentinegalleries.org/exhibitions-events/serpentine-pavilion-and-summer-houses-2016
mmer-houses-2016
http://www.big.dk/#projects
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8_House
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VIA_57_West
