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Here’s what the critics are writing about the 2024 Serpentine Pavilion

2024-06-12T16:31:00-04:00

The 23rd Serpentine Pavilion exhibition opened last week in London’s Kensington Gardens, drawing the usual mixture of praise and derision from UK-based critics who responded to the Archipelagic Void from Minsuk Cho and Mass Studies.

Kicking things off was the perfunctory Rowan Moore review. The Guardian’s longest-tenured critic seemed to enjoy the programmatic diversity of elements such as the Library of Unread Books and Play Tower, quipping that it is “an architectural equivalent of Korean multi-dish meals.”

Serpentine Pavilion 2024, Archipelagic Void, designed by Minsuk Cho, Mass Studies © Mass Studies Photo: Iwan Baan Courtesy: Serpentine

“It’s an enjoyable, playful, centrifugal-centripetal place, loose but distinctive, not afraid to be a bit ugly, full of contrasts and surprises, that gets a lot into its fairly small square footage,” he concludes. “The design is characterful but not dominating. It feels like what it is – a temporary building – rather than one that wishes it were...

South Korean architect Minsuk Cho and Mass Studies will design the 2024 Serpentine Pavilion

2024-01-22T13:13:00-05:00

South Korean architect Minsuk Cho has been announced as the designer of the 2024 Serpentine Pavilion commission in London. The Mass Studies founder debuted preliminary renders of their winning design this morning ahead of the exhibition’s June opening. His team's entry will appear as a star-like hub of activity to visitors, harkening them into experiencing a variety of communal spaces they say have resulted from a careful study of its past predecessors.

For the 23rd overall edition of the Serpentine Pavilion, a constellation of smaller structures will form around a central void space inspired by the vernacular Madang courtyard features found in small residential structures across Korea. Each of these five separate spaces will have a name and programmatic function while doubling as “content machines” and devised to montage with the corresponding flexible open areas and park surrounding the pavilion.

Serpentine Pavilion 2024 designed by Minsuk Cho, Mass Studies. Design render, exteri...

A first look at the 2023 Serpentine Pavilion designed by Lina Ghotmeh

2022-11-23T11:46:00-05:00

Lebanese-born architect Lina Ghotmeh has been selected as the architect for the 2023 Serpentine Pavilion in London. The Paris-based architect will be the 22nd designer of a Serpentine Pavilion, an annual event that began with Zaha Hadid’s commission in 2000.

Ghotmeh’s work sits at the intersection of architecture, art, and design, with particular consideration given to social conditions, environments, and materials. Her approach, therefore, includes a thorough research of location history, typologies, materials, resources, and user habits.

The 2023 Serpentine Pavilion will be titled À table, inspired by the French call to sit together at a table. Ghotmeh’s design will seek to achieve a sense of unity through its form, while an “organic” table and seating formation inside will invite human interaction.

Serpentine Pavilion 2023 designed by Lina Ghotmeh — Architecture. Photo © Lina Ghotmeh — Architecture. Courtesy of Serpentine

“À table is an invitation to dwell together, in the same ...

A first look at the 2022 Serpentine Pavilion designed by Theaster Gates

2022-02-03T10:47:00-05:00

The first details for the design of the 2022 Serpentine Pavilion have been released. Designed by Chicago-based artist Theaster Gates, and titled Black Chapel, the scheme draws inspiration from the industrial kilns of the English midlands, resulting in a cylindrical wooden structure with a punctured dome roof.

Designed in collaboration with Adjaye Associates, the pavilion is intended to be a “place of quietude” in the aftermath of COVID-19, with a programme of concerts and events including a performance by Gates and his band, the Black Monks. Gates describes the pavilion as a “chapel for new music” including ““Gospel, alt-jazz, avant garde sounds, the history of British black music, Gregorian and Benedictine chants – all the things me and my band are into.”

Architecturally, the 36-foo...

Serpentine will not host a pavilion this year due to COVID-19

2020-04-24T12:39:00-04:00

For the first time since the annual program was founded, Serpentine Galleries will not host the 2020 Serpentine Pavilion designed by Johannesburg-based practice Counterspace this summer. The commission has now been extended into a two-year endeavor in which the practice will collaborate with the Serpentine on a series of off-site and online research projects through the rest of this year. The culmination of this new project will resolve with the opening of the Pavilion in the summer of 2021.

Sir David Adjaye, a Serpentine Galleries trustee and Serpentine Pavilion Advisor said, "The global COVID-19 crisis has changed the immediate context. Rather than rush to execute Counterspace's stellar design as soon as it is safe to do so, the Serpentine has chosen to accept the slowness reshaping society today and utilize it to develop a deeper relationship with the architects."

Amina Kaskar, Sumayya Vally and Sarah de Villiers of Counterspace. Photographed by Justice Mukheli in Johannesburg, 2...

Serpentine Galleries chief resigns as art world confronts dirty money

2019-06-20T14:45:00-04:00

The head of the Serpentine Galleries has resigned after the Guardian revealed she is the co-owner of an Israeli cyberweapons company whose software has allegedly been used by authoritarian regimes to spy on dissidents. On Tuesday, Yana Peel announced she was stepping down as the chief executive of the prestigious London art gallery so the work of the Serpentine would not be undermined by what she called “misguided personal attacks on me and my family”.

Announcing her unexpected departure from the Serpentine Galleries in a statement, Yana Peel said, “I have decided I am better able to continue my work in supporting the arts, the advancement of human rights, and freedom of expression by moving away from my current role.”

Peel added, “The work of the Serpentine – and its incomparable artistic director – cannot be allowed to be undermined by misguided personal attacks on me and my family."

Issuing a warning to her peers, Peel added finally, “If campaigns of this type continue, the treasures of the art community – which are so fundamental to our society – risk an erosion of private support. That will be a great loss for everyone."

Peel's resignation comes as the art world begins to take stock of its dependence on unethical funding, board members with questionable business ties, and other problematic sources of income and support for its survival.

The Whitney Museum has received criticism for its ties to the unethical business practic...

2018 Serpentine Pavilion, designed by Mexican architect Frida Escobedo, is unveiled ahead of Friday's opening

2018-06-11T15:45:00-04:00

In an interview with the Guardian earlier this month, Mexican architect, and this year's designer of the 2018 Serpentine Pavilion, Frida Escobedo told Rowan Moore her focus for the commission was on “how you feel inside the space, how you go about it in the moment.” Opening this Friday on the Serpentine Gallery lawn in Kensington Garden, visitors will finally get the chance to experience what she's created for them: an enclosed courtyard composed of a lattice of cement roof tiles, featuring a shallow pool of water to ward off the Summer heat.

The youngest architect to be given one of summer's hottest invitations, Escobedo is a welcom...

Inaugural Serpentine Pavilion Beijing opens to the public

2018-06-01T18:04:00-04:00

The first Serpentine Pavilion co-commissioned and built outside the UK has opened its figurative doors in Beijing this week.

Designed by JIAKUN Architects, the temporary structure is the result of a collaboration between London's Serpentine Galleries and WF CENTRAL in Beijing. First renderings of the structure, which draws inspiration from Confucianism mimicking the figure of an archer, were unveiled earlier this year.

From the project description: "The Serpentine Pavilion Beijing will be a public space for cultural activities, events and social encounters at the very heart of WF CENTRAL, with a programme of cultural activities programmed across five Pavilion Weekends over the summer."

"With a focus on society, community and vernacula...

Christo comes to London

2018-04-11T15:57:00-04:00

And now he’s going to float a 150-tonne sculpture on a lake on London. Is it an allegory of the west’s oil dependency, an indictment of how we’re polluting the planet, or both? Christo shakes his locks and smiles. “I have no reason to justify myself as an artist. I cannot explain my art. Everything I do professionally is irrational and useless.” This, he thinks, is exactly as it should be. “I make things that have no function – except maybe to make pleasure.”

Artist Christo chats about his new Mastaba sculpture coming to London this summer: a giant trapezoidal prism of 7,506 stacked steel barrels to float on the Serpentine Lake. It will be his first large artwork in Britain.

Christo, The Mastaba (Project for London, Hyde Park, Serpentine Lake), Collage 2017 Pencil, wax crayon, enamel paint, color photograph by Wolfgang Volz, technical data and tape on brown board, 21.5 x 28 cm, Private collection, Switzerland. Photo: André Grossmann © 2017 Christo

Plans for a much bigger Mastaba with 410,000 barrels outside of Abu Dhabi first appeared several years ago but were never realized.

The accompanying exhibition Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Barrels and The Mastaba (1958–2018) will be on view from June 19 through September 9 at the nearby Serpentine Gallery.

Serpentine Pavilion is coming to Beijing this summer

2018-01-31T18:28:00-05:00

London-based Serpentine Galleries are branching out to China and will be opening the inaugural Serpentine Pavilion Beijing this May.

Announced as a collaboration with WF CENTRAL from Beijing, the new pavilion will be designed by JIAKUN Architects in the city's historic Dongcheng District, only a stones-throw away from the iconic Forbidden City.

Render of the Serpentine Pavilion Beijing 2018, Design by Jiakun Architects, © Jiakun Architects

According to the architects, the pavilion design takes inspiration from Confucianism, having the architecture act as a physical representation of the traditional pursuit of Junzi: "The design is characterized by the figure of the Archer, in the form of a curved cantilever beam that incorporates the forces of elasticity through cables stretched between steel plates. Although modern architecture in Beijing has developed a series of powerful techniques to fight the external forces of fierce winds and unpredictable earthquakes, the Pavilion's integral...

Julia Peyton-Jones discusses her legacy and leaving the Serpentine Gallery

2016-06-30T11:45:00-04:00

The London art world won’t be quite the same after July 8. That’s the day Julia Peyton-Jones is finally taking her leave of the Serpentine Gallery where she has been director since 1991. Over 25 years, she has overseen a programme that, bearing in mind the organisation’s relatively diminutive scale, has punched well above its weight with exhibitions that have included everything from Helen Chadwick’s unforgettable bubbling chocolate fountain to Marina Abramović’s 512 hour-long performance piece.

Read relating articles here:

Celebrate Zaha Hadid's life at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery on April 8th

2016-04-07T14:44:00-04:00

If you're in London Friday, you can celebrate the late, great Zaha Hadid at a public memorial held at the Magazine restaurant at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery. Between 2 p.m. and 7 p.m., visitors can sign books of condolence and pay respects to her surviving family members, which include her brother Haytham, nephew Hussein Haytham, niece Rana Haytham, as well as the family of her late brother Foulath Mohammad.

For more on Dame Hadid's work, life, and passing:

Serpentine unzips Bjarke Ingels' Pavilion and 4 Summer Houses

2016-02-24T13:21:00-05:00

Bjarke Ingels' unfurling wall-based pavilion joins four summer houses—designed by Asif Khan, Kunlé Adeyemi, Barkow Leibinger, and Yona Friedman—to create this year's Serpentine Architecture Program. Each of the four summer houses riffs on the adjacent Queen Caroline's Temple designed in 1734, while BIG's Serpentine Pavilion appears to have been inspired by the desire to, according to an interview with Ingels in the Standard, "use rationality and rigour to create the extraordinary out of the ordinary.”

“We’ve played with one of the most basic elements [of a building] — the wall,” Ingels explains. “Typically, walls are made from stacked identical elements. When you see it you can sense how it fits into our general way of thinking. We are playing with the idea of bigamy — you don’t have to choose between box or blob.”

According to the Serpentine Pavilion's website, Asif Khan's summer house was designed in part to mimic the Queen Caroline Temple's orientation toward the Serpentine Lake, ...

BIG to design 2016 Serpentine Pavilion, alongside smaller "Summer Houses" by Kunlé Adeyemi, Barkow Leibinger, Yona Friedman and Asif Kahn

2016-02-10T15:29:00-05:00

The Serpentine Galleries in London announced earlier today the designer of the 2016 iteration of their annual Pavilion series: Bjarke Ingels Group, or BIG, the Copenhagen and New York-based global powerhouse.

This summer marks the 16th Pavilion of the acclaimed program, which began in 2000. Conceived initially by Julia Peyton-Jones, the outgoing co-director of the Galleries, the Serpentine’ Pavilion commission is awarded each year to noted architects who have never built in the UK.

As Peyton-Jones’ swan song, this summer’s program will be expanded to include four other 25 square meter structures, or “Summer Houses”, scattered on the lawns of Hyde Park in close proximity to the Galleries. These will be designed by Kunlé Adeyemi – NLÉ (Amsterdam/Lagos), Barkow Leibinger (Berlin/New York), Yona Friedman (Paris) and Asif Kahn (London).

Since its inception, the Serpentine Pavilion has drawn large crowds, garnering public attention for practitioners whose reputations had not necessarily exce...

After 25 years, Serpentine co-director Julia Peyton-Jones is leaving

2015-10-30T18:03:00-04:00

Peyton-Jones joined the gallery in 1991 and was sole director for 15 years until she was joined by Hans Ulrich Obrist as co-director in 2006. The pair’s ethos for the gallery was “to think the unthinkable”. [...] Since 2000, she has also commissioned some of the world’s most sought-after architects to design a temporary pavilion for the gallery each year, which has become a highly popular annual attraction, drawing thousands of visitors to the park.

More recent news from the Serpentine gallery and its famed annual pavilion:

Serpentine Galleries launch Build Your Own Pavilion for (really) young architects

2015-06-25T15:26:00-04:00

In this first year of Build Your Own Pavilion, young people aged 8 to 14 are invited to submit their Pavilion designs online and at workshops across the UK during the summer of 2015. The platform and workshops give an insight to the basic principles of architectural design and workshop students will be given the Pavilion brief and a toolkit that begins with sketching by hand, working with simple modeling materials and progressing to 3D design and print technologies.

Earlier this week, London's Serpentine Galleries launched the much anticipated 2015 summer pavilion — a vibrant and playful space slug designed by SelgasCano.

To celebrate fifteen years of pavilions (and continuing the theme of "playfulness"), the Galleries also launched Build Your Own Pavilion: Young Architects Challenge, an initiative that "enables young people to upload their own designs for a Pavilion to an online gallery, gain insight and learn about the architectural process from the world’s leading architects, download tools for designing and building their own Pavilions."

Besides the website, Build Your Own Pavilion also offers design & engineering workshops for children throughout the UK, organized in partnership with Kidesign. See some images and a video of previous workshops below.

SelgasCano unveils designs for the 2015 Serpentine Pavilion

2015-03-25T13:00:00-04:00

Earlier today, the Serpentine Galleries in London released the first images of the 2015 Serpentine Pavilion, designed by the Spanish firm of SelgasCano headed by José Selgas and Lucía Cano. In keeping with the criteria of the annual program, this will be the first UK project by the award-winning firm, and is also the first pavilion designed by Spanish architects. According to a statement released with the announcement, the pavilion will consist of "an amorphous, double-skinned, polygonal structure consisting of panels of a translucent, multi-coloured fabric membrane (ETFE) woven through and wrapped in webbing." The images released with the statement consist of colorful, playful renders populated by cartoonish figures.

A much-anticipated event each year, the Serpentine Pavilion is one of the "top-ten most visited architecture and design exhibits in the world." Visitors to the SelgasCano-designed pavilion will be able to enter the structure from a number of openings, "passing through a...

Smiljan Radic: A Rock Star Among Architects

2014-07-10T13:13:00-04:00

Two weeks ago, a translucent pod of glass-reinforced plastic, poised atop enormous sandstone boulders, appeared on a curve of lawn in Kensington Gardens in London. The folly [...] is by the Chilean architect Smiljan Radic, whom the nearby Serpentine Galleries chose to create a temporary structure in its front yard. It is the 14th year that the museum has commissioned a Serpentine Pavilion, always turning to an architect who has not previously built in Britain [...].

Smiljan Radic unveils egglike 14th Serpentine Pavilion in London's Kensington Gardens

2014-06-24T13:17:00-04:00

Since the announcement this past March, Chilean architect Smiljan Radic has unveiled the 14th Serpentine Pavilion at the Serpentine Gallery's Kensington Gardens in London. For the past 14 years, the Serpentine Gallery has invited famous architects like Sou Fujimoto, Jean Nouvel, SANAA, and Frank Gehry to design the annual temporary structure for the London Festival of Architecture. Their famous designers aside, the pavilions themselves are a story of their own.

An eggshell. A "Stone Age spaceship". A cocoon. A deformed donut -- Radic's design for the 14th Serpentine Pavilion is already receiving plenty of colorful descriptions. Supported by massive quarry stones, Radic's pavilion is a fiberglass, semi-transparent hollow shell that will be used to host a variety of social and cultural events and will also include a cafe inside. The pavilion's flooring also features gray wooden decking to make the structure feel more like a patio than a fully enclosed space.

Playing on the idea of the f...