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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.

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Inside Yona Friedman's Serpentine Pavilion Summer House

2016-06-08T15:16:00-04:00

At 93 years of age, Friedman is the oldest architect in the group. He took the opportunity to further explain the thinking that has propelled his life’s work, and the origin story behind the structure. The Summer House, Friedman explained, “was improvised from small models that I was putting together and it was reproduced. And for me the most important [thing was] that anyone could make this, and I made this experiment and it was built by children.”

Yona Friedman officially describes his ephemeral, elegantly 16mm steel-framed Serpentine Summer House as "a space-chain construction of 4 + 1 levels...composed of cubes defined by 6 circles of 1.85 metre in diameter" that rest upon the ground. It's "essentially a movable museum and exhibition."

Luckily, Archinect's very own U.K.-based correspondent Robert Urquhart, who covered this year's Serpertine Pavilion in depth, had the opportunity to speak with Friedman, who noted that “I think that architecture is first of all social, it has to be manageable, the interior is made by the inhabitant. An architect can invent the sculpture of reality.” For more of what Robert and Yona discussed, check out the piece in the link above!

Serpentine Galleries appoints Yana Peel as new CEO

2016-04-13T15:32:00-04:00

Hong Kong-based philanthropist and entrepreneur Yana Peel has been appointed chief executive of the Serpentine Galleries in London. The [Serpentine's] trustees took the unusual decision to choose a fellow trustee to fill the new post. Julia Peyton-Jones, who put the institution on the international map, is stepping down as co-director this month after 25 years at the helm. Peel will work in partnership with Hans Ulrich Obrist...[who] takes on the new role of artistic director.

Women in Architecture Awards recognize Odile Decq and Julia Peyton-Jones

2016-02-26T18:30:00-05:00

Odile Decq has won the Jane Drew Prize and Julia Peyton-Jones has been awarded the Ada Louise Huxtable Prize in the annual Women in Architecture Awards. The judges described Odile Decq as ‘a creative powerhouse, spirited breaker of rules and advocate of equality’. [...] The judges celebrated Julia Peyton-Jones’ ‘incredible global impact achieved with limited resources – and as someone who has done so much to nurture architectural vision and make architecture available to many people’.

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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: