Archinect : News : Gehry Reveals his Serpentine

The Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2008 will give London the first example of Frank Gehry’s spectacular architecture. The highly articulated structure – designed and engineered in collaboration with Arup – comprises large timber planks and multiple glass planes that soar and swoop at different angles to create a dramatic multi-dimensional space. Part-amphitheatre, part-promenade, these seemingly random elements will make a transformative place for reflection and relaxation by day, and discussion and performance by night.

The Serpentine Gallery Pavilion series, now entering its ninth year, is the world’s first and most ambitious architectural programme of its kind, and is one of the most anticipated events in the international design calendar.

Frank Gehry said: “The Pavilion is designed as a wooden timber structure that acts as an urban street running from the park to the existing Gallery. Inside the Pavilion, glass canopies are hung from the wooden structure to protect the interior from wind and rain and provide for shade during sunny days. The Pavilion is much like an amphitheatre, designed to serve as a place for live events, music, performance, discussion and debate. As the visitor walks through the Pavilion they have access to terraced seating on both sides of the urban street. In addition to the terraced seating there are five elevated seating pods, which are accessed around the perimeter of the Pavilion. These pods serve as visual markers enclosing the street and can be used as stages, private viewing platforms and dining areas.”

Read more about it at the Serpentine website

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About the Serpentine Gallery
Serpentine Gallery is one of London’s best-loved galleries for modern and contemporary art. Its Exhibition, Architecture, Education and Public Programmes attract approximately 750,000 visitors a year and admission is free.

In the grounds of the Gallery is a permanent work by artist and poet Ian Hamilton Finlay, dedicated to the Serpentine’s former Patron Diana, Princess of Wales. The work comprises eight benches, a tree-plaque, and a carved stone circle at the Gallery’s entrance.

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Previous Serpentine Gallery news on Archinect:
Gehry to design Serpentine
Art meets science
Pavilion for Public Intelligentsia
In the hall of the mountain king: Olafur Eliasson's Serpentine Pavilion
Serpentine Gallery: A spinning top on an epic scale
Serpentine "Pre-Pavilion" Images
Serpentine's 3rd try
Serpentine Pavilion Eliasson/Thorsen
Richard Rogers Wins Pritzker Prize 2007
Serpentine Pavilion Becomes Collaborative Event?
Frei Otto does the Serpentine
In the Darkest Hour There May Be Light.
Guerrilla tactics
A battle of the former power stations
A Serpentine Coil
Hot Air and Architecture
Serpentine Pavilion 24 Hour Marathon
Serpentine Blows
Is it worth it?
21st-century design: The ultra-cool world of Rem Koolhaas
London's garden playground for architects
Serpentine: Building Site
Trust The Koolhaas Touch
Thomas Demand at Serpentine Gallery
Koolhaas Blows a Bubble
The IS-land
All the angles
Grass Mountain, Abandoned
Koolhaas to design 2006 Serpentine Pavillion
Toyo Ito wins Royal Gold Medal
Pavilion in Cork
The Diva-nator
A Mountain in the People's Palace
Park Place
Architecture Hangover
SerpentBuild2
SerpentBuild
New Sketches of Serpentine Pavilion
Serpentine Pavilion 2005
Tomoko Takahashi's takeaway!
Serpentine Pavilion 2005 - some more
Neither fountain nor mountain
Remaking Lloyd
The Serpentine, postponed
Toyo Ito: Tod's
No running. No wading. No throwing things.
MVRDV High Modernistas
MVRDV Serpentine MOUNTAIN
Where is the Gallery?
Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2005
Videolinkfest
Landscapes of the mind
Serpentine Gallery Pavilion

It’s like Piranesi… if Piranesi forgot to engineer the ceiling panels correctly and they fell, massacring all the revelers and rabble-rousers below… frank, what the fuck is this?!?

- holz.box, Mar 25, 08 | 2:17 pm

i guess when you've had the length and breadth of career that fog has, you can get away with presenting something as ridiculous looking as this and be taken seriously.

- dreadlocks dread, Mar 25, 08 | 2:50 pm

Why didn't anyone tell him that it's ugly? Has he gotten so big that no one dares mention these little facts to him before he presents it? EVERY architect needs critique, and I think this is proof of that.

Ditto to Jayness, first year stuff.

- DJ dub::K, Mar 25, 08 | 4:00 pm

This is old school Gehry. Deconstructivist, everything blown out of scale, huge beams. He probably just went back into his stash of polaroids of previous models and pasted a few together. Gehry's a hack...I said it!!

- archca26, Mar 25, 08 | 5:35 pm

What a load of crap.... you people talk!!
GEHRY i s the most demonstrative, fearless leaders in the world of architecture!! Yet he is criticised by the Bauhaus Boys above!?
LEARN FROM THE MAN.... HONESTLY! He has the CONVICTION OF AN ASSASSIN, THE SELF-BELIEF OK A TIBETAN MONK, AND THE BALLS OF AN ELEPHANT!!! PITY THERE AREN'T MORE 'NON-CONFORMISTS' OUT THERE!
The mans house had bullet holes in, because he took the piss out of his neighbours by building 'sails' to emilate their ne'er used yachts!!
Remember the golden rule!! Learn from and worship your own God!! But don't piss on your neighbours Ideal...... Not until you see who was correct anyway!!
All the best, Dazz@

- DAZZ@, Mar 25, 08 | 5:48 pm

I'm with archca26 - except on the "hack" comment. I like this little pavilion far better than anything Gehry has done in the last 10 years, outside of the IAC, which was also something of a departure.

I like it because it seems to go back to his more playful, simple, and inexpensive roots. It's hard to tell materials from the model, but I'd love for it to be big parallel strand lumber and 2x4's.

- liberty bell, Mar 25, 08 | 5:53 pm

Canuck's had that old Wayne Gretzky ad playing on TV, years ago...

Kids, don't take drugs,

Choose hockey!

That applies to old Frank

PS: If anyone can find that ad on youtube, please tell me.

- etiennecoutu, Mar 25, 08 | 7:05 pm

If this is going to be a good space/environment - I'm going to be seriously thrilled - because someone has shown that a project can be good architecture, eventhough looking like shit when presented with models/diagrams.

It's been the other way round way too long - slick/clever/striking presentations and visual ideas followed by bad realisation or just bad architecture. This could really reverse that formula...

- Helsinki, Mar 25, 08 | 11:55 pm

"first year undergrad stuff"
a) it's art, appropriate for the serpintine
b) he is a [b]genius[/]b for building a model like that and getting it made a serpintine

or perhaps, perhaps, the computer has led to overly accurate renderings of projects that would best be displayed with a 2 minute sketch (i find myself doing that in renderings more and more and spending a lot less time Vraying it)

- Sir Arthur Braagadocio, Mar 26, 08 | 2:55 am

I cannot even grasp the spatial aspects of that project...I would argue that it his most sculptural to date. Although many of Gehry's projects look like crap at model stage, and turn out majest on completion if not just by the shear engineering to it. I will give my credit to ARUP for keeping a straight face when they say it for the first time. Someone ring up Cecil Balmond and find out

- architechnophilia, Mar 26, 08 | 5:26 am

I agree that too many architects get insanely fixated on slick rendering and presentation models. It gets to the point that they think a good rendering makes a good idea, that photoshopping large crowds into a space makes it habitable. Really, this could be amazing and it's nice to see Gehry moving on from his CATIA phase. Decon was too short-lived and it'll be interesting to see what happens next.

- vincentVan, Mar 26, 08 | 6:16 am

there is nothing I can even begin to enjoy here.

anyone that has ghery design them anything is just wasting their money. I still can't believe people pay him. what a useless twit of an architect.

- scan(adian), Mar 27, 08 | 9:49 am

Does anyone else out there feel all these comments are as if Gehry didn't exist before Bilbao? This looks so much like Gehry to me. Am I alone here?

I see archca26's comment up there and agree. but what's with the unrelated hack part. You make a good point, then end with a piece-of-poop senseless comment.

- garpike, Mar 27, 08 | 4:56 pm

^ Maybe the project needs a Claes Oldenburg sculpture to remind everyone how familiar this thing is.

MIT may disagree, but I would never say he's a hack - rather, he's very good at making grotesque spaces.

- Israel Kandarian, Mar 28, 08 | 9:03 am

"Inside the Pavilion, glass canopies are hung from the wooden structure to protect the interior from wind and rain and provide for shade during sunny days."

Eh -- shade during sunny day's, by glass ??

- Per--Corell, Jun 20, 08 | 10:37 am