Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2017

The author of the summer pavilion in Kensington Gardens is fifty-one-year-old African architect Diébédo Francis Kéré, who received his education at the Technical University of Berlin, where he has also operated his practice since 1998. Kéré entered the wider public consciousness in 2004 when he received the prestigious Aga Khan Award for Architecture for the design of a primary school for his home village of Gando in West Africa's Burkina Faso.
Kéré's design is inspired by the tree that represents the center of all life in his home village. The London pavilion is surrounded by a blue wall decorated with equilateral triangles. The main structural support consists of a filigree truss made of thin steel wires, supporting a circular roof made of wooden slats. The funnel-shaped roof with an exposed center will create a water curtain during rainy weather, highlighting this life-giving element.