Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2013, designed by Sou Fujimoto / Indicative CGI. © Sou Fujimoto Architects, courtesy Serpentine Gallery, London.
Architect Sou Fujimoto will design this year’s Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in London’s Kensington Gardens, it was announced Feb 14.
At 41, Fujimoto is the youngest architect to accept the prestigious commission from one of the UK’s premier contemporary art institutions. He joins the ranks of previous participants including Zaha Hadid (2000), Toyo Ito (2002), Oscar Niemeyer (2003), Frank Gehry (2008) and Kazuyo Sejima & Ryue Nishizawa of SANAA (2009). Fujimoto has proposed a cloud-like, latticed structure made of 20mm steel poles, such that it blends into the surrounding landscape. Forming an irregular ring shape, the structure will have a footprint of 350 square-meters.
In a statement, Fujimoto explained, “I propose an architectural landscape: a transparent terrain that encourages people to interact with and explore the site in diverse ways. Within the pastoral context of Kensington Gardens, I envisage the vivid greenery of the surrounding plant life woven together with a constructed geometry. A new form of environment will be created, where the natural and the man-made merge; not solely architectural nor solely natural, but a unique meeting of the two.”
Known for exploring organic structures such as the forest, nest and cave, Fujimoto envisions that the pavilion “will create a geometric, cloud-like form, as if it were mist rising from the undulations of the park.”
For more on Fujimoto, see ART iT’s interview with him on the occasion of his participation in the 2010 Venice Architecture Biennale: