The Dulwich Pavilion is a temporary events pavilion installed at Dulwich Picture Gallery for the London Festival of Architecture and open to the public until October 2017. A lively marriage of moving mirrored screens, a wide-spanning timber roof and bright metal mesh is used to form the backdrop of a summer of artistic and cultural events while paying tribute to John Soane’s iconic Gallery on its 200th anniversary since opening.

The Dulwich Pavilion is a transformative project for Dulwich Picture Gallery and Almacantar, a breakthrough moment for a young architecture practice, and an important legacy for the London Festival of Architecture 2017. The Gallery’s first pavilion extends into the surrounding landscape, celebrating Soane’s original architecture and allowing the Gallery to overcome a lack of existing space and meet increasing visitor demand. IF_DO’s design, developed with engineers StructureMode and realised by bespoke fabricators Weber Industries, offers a model for other cultural institutions facing similar issues, and responds to the LFA’s mission to champion London architecture and promote positive change to the city’s public realm.

The LFA and Dulwich Picture Gallery launched the pavilion design competition in autumn 2016, with support from Almacantar. Bermondsey-based practice IF_DO, established in 2014 by Al Scott, Sarah Castle and Thomas Bryans, overcame competition from a field of 75 entries with their design ‘After Image’. It was chosen by a judging panel including Ruth Rogers (chef and founder, River Café), Carl Turner (founder and director, Carl Turner Architects), Mike Hussey (Chief Executive, Almacantar) and Nancy Durrant (arts commissioning editor, The Times)

Conceptually the Pavilion responds to the solidity and monolithic nature of the Gallery building, and the porous, ever-changing nature of the landscape. Structurally the pavilion is lightweight and minimal, comprising a timber truss roof suspended over a level timber deck supported on three fixed slender mirrored panels. All of the remaining wall panels are moveable or removable, creating a flexible space enabling numerous configurations for different events. A fixed bar/café pod opens up when in use to reveal a serving area.