The latest iteration of the Serpentine Pavilion is now open in London after more than a year of COVID-related delays.
South African studio Counterspace had to wait 10 months to present its final design after being named to the commission in February of 2020.
The women-led team completed the commission's 20th Pavilion using repurposed materials including wine corks, steel, and cement leftover from marble production. This culminated in a carbon-negative building six meters in height that brought together elements from the city’s disparate migrant enclaves in an amalgam of typologies meant to articulate different scales of intimacy, according to Counterspace’s founder Sumayya Vally.
To gain perspective for the structure, Vally spent four months in the city looking for gathering spaces that typified the immigrant experience. What she found was quintessentially London: bookshops in Hackney, a mosque in East London, a Carnival in Notting Hill.
"Something that’s really important about all of the spaces that the pavilion touches on, draws on, and is inspired by is that they fall outside the margins of what we recognize as traditional and significant architecture, but they are really important in their function as spaces for gathering communities. They function entirely different from conventional institutions," Vally said.
As these spaces became folded into the group’s design, AECOM and contractor Stage One had the uniquely challenging task of having to work remotely with the architect and technical advisor David Glover to coordinate on the construction of the pavilion whose abstracted forms and sculptural profile required many “bespoke details”, according to senior engineer Madalina Taylor.
Counterspace also had to endure sharp criticism of the project, which used 95 cubic meters of concrete to construct what is now Serpentine’s largest-ever Pavillion. The amount of concrete poured for a temporary structure drew the ire of some architects on social media, who pointed out that the carbon footprint of the material was directly opposed to Serpentine director’s Hans Ulrich Obrist stated goal for the exhibition to place ecology “at the heart of everything we do.”
Perhaps @aecom or @_counterspace have not quite understood we're in a climate emergency? 95 cubic metres of concrete for a temporary structure. Should be illegal. @ArchitectsJrnal @ollywainwright @merlinfulcher https://t.co/doCzYDM1aF
— Daniel Rea (@danielrea) April 30, 2021
The gallery, for the most part, have remained mum on the issue, choosing instead to focus on the exhibition’s social statement and communal aspirations – elements Vally believes are critical to the pavilion’s success as architecture and as public design.
“Something that’s really important about all of the spaces that the pavilion touches on, draws on, and is inspired by is that they fall outside the margins of what we recognize as traditional and significant architecture but they are really important in their function of spaces for gathering communities,” she said. “They function entirely differently from conventional institutions […] an entirely different model for what institutional spaces can look like.”
As with past pavilions, the structure will be disassembled and shipped elsewhere. This year's version had already been acquired by the spa and resort corporation Therme Group, its third, and will remain on view to the public through October 17.
10 Comments
It's bullshit criticism, the project isn't temporary, the site is.
most people would rather argue about symbolic climate impacts than real ones. this is a tiny tiny thing which has no measurable climate impact at all. (but certainly less than zumthors bruder klaus chapel) indeed all the pavilions ever built past and future are still wholly irrelevant to the issue.
plus the article also says it's a carbon negative project due to wine corks or something so there's that to assuage the self righteous guilt.
< raises hand > Volunteering to drink more wine if that helps climate crisis.
Nice guest house for a Bond villain's entourage!
I feel some Scarpa vibs in there. I like it.
I don't get it. And not just this one but the whole Serpentine Pavilion thing.
I get that it's a PR play, but can't they find something more meaningful to do?
Couldn't they have pictures with people in them? Right now it's very different than the intended public occupation, more like a jewelry store type of commercial use image. Bad PR. Maybe that's why and what for The Therme Manchester resort is planning to buy it. It's still beautiful tho.
I think this scale model of the USS Reliant is lovely.
This is beautiful
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