London's Serpentine Gallery just released plans for the 2012 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion designed by Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei. This summer's pavilion, the twelfth commission in the gallery’s annual series, will be open to the public from June 1 to October 14, 2012. — bustler.net
Let us know what you think about this year's pavilion design in the comment section below. You can also re-read reactions to the initial announcement of the design team here.
16 Comments
With such a high profile and talented architects, what a missed opportunity to express progressive political, social or theoretical ideas in the profession... I am particularly disappointed in the "diagram" that justifies this scheme - looks like a first year project. Would have liked to see some appeal or relevance of the architectural proposal to the broader spheres of society rather than this self-indulgent crap.
There was a line in the movie Drowning by Numbers about all that water up above people's heads being unnatural.
I've never viewed water towers the same since.
Like many of their projects, this one in particular is about revealing and expanding upon hidden and potential qualities of the site.
...which is refreshing given the number of ongoing large-scale projects that they currently have. It seems to revisit some of their earlier themes on context and transformation, but on a much more material level.
Very curious to see how this turns out.... It's hard to tell from the images here, but I think it could be a great project, and a return to some of the themes that have informed the firm's work since the very beginning, but which have been suppressed in their more recent large-scale projects. Look (way) back to their multiple projects for the Redesign of Basel's Marktplatz, where they suggested carving into the ground of the plaza to reveal the buried canals below the surface... Or more recent work like the Park Avenue Armory, where they took an archaeological approach to the 'de-layering' and restoration of the wall surfaces... As for Ai Wei Wei, you can draw some parallels here with his Archaeological Archive at the Jinhua Architecture Park, with its manipulation of the ground plane... (though there there's little history to reveal).
I wish I could make it to London this year... Can't wait for the photos...
"this one in particular is about revealing and expanding upon hidden and potential qualities of the site...."
do you mean entirely imagined interpretation of the site?one has to admit the idea of uncovering the "archaelogy" of the past pavilions is pretty silly.
how does this engage or even accessible with respect to other professions / disciplines? can such "forward-thinking" proposals from our profession imagine solutions / futures actually beneficial to people as well ?
"do you mean entirely imagined interpretation of the site?one has to admit the idea of uncovering the "archaelogy" [sic] of the past pavilions is pretty silly."
you have just knocked a few famous oeuvres with that comment.
i am sorry i dont know what that word means
mmhh sorry, haven't read or actually seen any images rather i just read the title of the post.... and then immediately, one question popped up in my mind... why they do it w/Ai Wei Wei and not with some unknown younger artist...mabe from an apparently quiet country as their own (Switzerland) sometimes places that look more "harmonious" tend to be more radical than those who everyone is pointing out as trouble...
never mind, this is quite a late comment... (late cause is like 2am) so i might be saying non.senses
I'm guessing they collaborated w/ Ai Wei Wei because he's their current artist-of-choice. A history of HdM's work with artists would be fascinating.... Joseph Beuys (fasnacht parade float), Remy Zaug (Aurau kunsthaus), Jenny Holzer (Cottbus early studies), Thomas Ruff (Eberswalde Library), Ai Wei Wei.... Am I missing any major collaborations?
Evan re your last comment- one could lovingly say you are a hertzog and de muron fan boy!
A shift in concept.
BD Online: Serpentine pavilion scheme fails to uncover foundations.
But rather than the “distinctive landscape” promised by the pair, pictures taken by BD this week of the excavated site in Hyde Park show nothing but soil and gravel – with no obvious foundations visible.
A spokesman for the Serpentine said because Kensington Gardens were a Royal Park the remnants of previous pavilions, including foundations, have had to be removed.
That article is behind a paywall.
This had to have struck someone at H&dM/AWW as a likelyhood, right? It's the first thing I thought of when I read the concept. Probably they were always going to do a constructed/projective archaeology - that's what it seems like when you see the way it's all made of cork in the model photos, and the colored cad lines in the drawing.
Here's betting this was always the plan, and that BD thinks they're doing some kind of expose on the non-existence of the traces that H&dM/AWW had always counting on inventing anyway.
That's exactly what I think, Fred. BD Online's article is just breathless pearl-clutching. I love the idea of a cork landscape. Still freaked out by that water roof, though.
Recently in The Architect's Journal Interview: Herzog & de Meuron on why the Serpentine Pavilion is going underground for 2012, Herzog is quoted "We were determined not to do an ‘object’...There is no hidden content, we’re not interested in symbolic irony. It’s just the pleasure of having it there."
This project, finally, for me, calls into question the entire concept of the Serpentine pavilions. You give a major architect a chance to build in London simply because they have not yet built there? As if HdM is not retrofitting the Tate Modern as we speak? As if Zaha isn't based in London? As if most Serpentine architects have not already achieved major projects in Europe and the States?
What is the point of putting pritzker prize winning architects on a pedestal, aren't they already there?
PS1's model is a lot more democratic and a lot more interesting because of that.
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