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. 

“We began by asking what can be uncovered and added to the Serpentine site, which has already explored over 20 iterations at the center of the lawn, from a roster of great architects and artists,” Cho said when asked about his team’s approach to designing the 2024 commission. “To approach this new chapter differently, instead of viewing it as a carte blanche, we embraced the challenge of considering the many existing peripheral elements while exploring the center as a void. It also begins to address the history of the Serpentine Pavilion. By inverting the center as a void, we shift our architectural focus away from the built center of the past, facilitating new possibilities and narratives.” 

Cho had practiced in New York for OMA and the firm then known as Polshek and Partners (now Ennead) before returning to Korea to found Mass Studies in 2003. Since then, several leading professional awards and other honors have followed, including the prestigious Golden Lion Award for the best national pavilion at the 2014 Venice Biennale. His firm recently completed an expansion project for the French embassy in Seoul and renovation of the Osulloc Tea Museum on Jeju Island in the past few years. Cho is also one of a handful of Korean architects and artists to have received the Hwagwan Medal Order of Cultural Merit from the national government. 

“We are honored to present Minsuk Cho’s first structure on UK soil here at Serpentine as our next architecture Pavilion, opening this summer,” the Serpentine’s Chief Executive and Artistic Director, Bettina Korek and Hans Ulrich Obrist, said in a preview finally. “Titled Archipelagic Void, Cho’s Pavilion is modular by nature, composed of individual structures that serve specific functions, yet which also come together as a continuous unit.”

The 23rd pavilion follows Lebanese-French architect Lina Ghotmeh’s food-inspired contribution and will be open to the public from June 7th through October 27th in London’s Kensington Gardens.