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. — telegraph.co.uk

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.” — Archinect

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. — The Art Newspaper

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’. — architectural-review.com

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. — theguardian.com