Last year you may remember that I posted about the Colourful Serpentine Pavilion with a sea of colour that filled the outside of the gallery building. This year it seems instead of colour there was a humongous structure towering over us. Box upon box stacked up, a weird sensation walking through looking out the hollow gaps to the outside grounds of greenery. Although there was quite a lot of people around, when we decided to sit down for five minutes on a bench outside it was still so calm and peaceful.
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 acclaimed Park Nights programme of performative works.
Further round the corner just a small walk away, were four more additions which we didn't get last year. Each a completely different design, these summer houses are perfect for a little sit down and enjoying the sunshine. All found within the grounds of Kensington Gardens and all free to visit.
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.
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.
Asif Khan’s design is inspired by the fact that Queen Caroline’s Temple was positioned in a way that would allow it to catch the sunlight from The Serpentine lake.
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
Want to make a visit yourself:
The Serpentine Pavilion is open daily from 10am to 6pm until 9th October.
Entry is free, and there’s a pop up tea shop and ice cream stall inside if you fancied a little treat.
Why not check out the official website for details on the exhibition.
Entry is free, and there’s a pop up tea shop and ice cream stall inside if you fancied a little treat.
Why not check out the official website for details on the exhibition.
