Proposal for the Serpentine Gallery summer pavilion 2012 by H&deM and Ai Weiwei
From the February announcement by the London Serpentine Gallery that the authors of this year's pavilion will be the Basel duo H&deM with Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, there has been impatient anticipation regarding the form that the announced 'excavation work revealing the remnants of previous pavilions' will take. At the same time, this marks the four hundredth project of the Swiss duo Jacques Herzog & Pierre de Meuron, whose professional career spans over three decades.
The floor plan of the new pavilion will consist of a mixture of eleven earlier structures presented here as exposed foundations covered with cork, thereby creating a unique 'archaeological landscape.' The choice of cork was made due to its ecological properties and also its visual similarity to excavated soil. Through a gradual path underground, visitors will delve deeper into history and gain an insight into previous pavilions. Eleven columns placed below the level of the lawn will remind visitors of past constructions, and a new twelfth column will support a mirrored roof hovering 1.4 meters above the lawn.
Throughout the summer, the pavilion will traditionally serve as a venue for various social and cultural events, with the highlight always being the interview marathon by Hans Ulrich Obrist, who initiated this idea seven years ago (2006 - 24-hour Serpentine Gallery Interview Marathon, 2007 - Experiment Marathon, 2008 - Manifesto Marathon, 2009 - Poetry Marathon, 2010 - Map Marathon, 2011 - Garden Marathon, 2012 - Serpentine Gallery Memory Marathon).
The summer pavilion in London's Hyde Park will open to the public on June 1, 2012, and will be accessible until October 14, 2012. After that, the pavilion will be transferred to the ownership of Usha and Lakshmi N. Mittal, who purchased it for their private collections.
More information >
“Every year since 2000, a different architect has been responsible for creating the Serpentine Gallery’s summer Pavilion for Kensington Gardens. That makes eleven Pavilions so far, our contribution will be the twelfth. So many Pavilions in so many different shapes and out of so many different materials have been conceived and built that we tried instinctively to sidestep the unavoidable problem of creating an object, a concrete shape.
Our path to an alternative solution involves digging down some five feet into the soil of the park until we reach the groundwater. There we dig a waterhole, a kind of well, to collect all of the London rain that falls in the area of the Pavilion. In that way we incorporate an otherwise invisible aspect of reality in the park – the water under the ground – into our Pavilion. As we dig down into the earth we encounter a diversity of constructed realities such as telephone cables and former foundations. Like a team of archaeologists, we identify these physical fragments as remains of the eleven Pavilions built between 2000 and 2011. Their shape varies: circular, long and narrow, dots and also large, constructed hollows that have been filled in… These remains testify to the existence of the former Pavilions and their greater or lesser intervention in the natural environment of the park.
All of these foundations will now be uncovered and reconstructed. The old foundations form a jumble of convoluted lines, like a sewing pattern. A distinctive landscape emerges out of the reconstructed foundations which is unlike anything we could have invented; its form and shape is actually a serendipitous gift. The three-dimensional reality of this landscape is astonishing and it is also the perfect place to sit, stand, lie down or just look and be amazed. In other words, the ideal environment for continuing to do what visitors have been doing in the Serpentine Gallery Pavilions over the past eleven years – and a discovery for the many new visitors anticipated for the London 2012 Olympic Games.
On the foundations of each single Pavilion, we extrude a new structure (supports, walls) as load-bearing elements for the roof of our Pavilion – eleven supports all told, plus our own column that we can place at will, like a wild card. The roof resembles that of an archaeological site. It floats a few feet above the grass of the park, so that everyone visiting can see the water on it, its surface reflecting the infinitely varied, atmospheric skies of London. For special events, the water can be drained off the roof as from a bathtub, from whence it flows back into the waterhole, the deepest point in the Pavilion landscape. The dry roof can then be used as a dance floor or simply as a platform suspended above the park.”
Cork is a natural material with wonderful haptic and olfactory qualities with the versatility to be carved, cut, shaped and formed, as demonstrated in many historical examples of cork architectural models.”
The floor plan of the new pavilion will consist of a mixture of eleven earlier structures presented here as exposed foundations covered with cork, thereby creating a unique 'archaeological landscape.' The choice of cork was made due to its ecological properties and also its visual similarity to excavated soil. Through a gradual path underground, visitors will delve deeper into history and gain an insight into previous pavilions. Eleven columns placed below the level of the lawn will remind visitors of past constructions, and a new twelfth column will support a mirrored roof hovering 1.4 meters above the lawn.
Throughout the summer, the pavilion will traditionally serve as a venue for various social and cultural events, with the highlight always being the interview marathon by Hans Ulrich Obrist, who initiated this idea seven years ago (2006 - 24-hour Serpentine Gallery Interview Marathon, 2007 - Experiment Marathon, 2008 - Manifesto Marathon, 2009 - Poetry Marathon, 2010 - Map Marathon, 2011 - Garden Marathon, 2012 - Serpentine Gallery Memory Marathon).
The summer pavilion in London's Hyde Park will open to the public on June 1, 2012, and will be accessible until October 14, 2012. After that, the pavilion will be transferred to the ownership of Usha and Lakshmi N. Mittal, who purchased it for their private collections.
More information >
“Every year since 2000, a different architect has been responsible for creating the Serpentine Gallery’s summer Pavilion for Kensington Gardens. That makes eleven Pavilions so far, our contribution will be the twelfth. So many Pavilions in so many different shapes and out of so many different materials have been conceived and built that we tried instinctively to sidestep the unavoidable problem of creating an object, a concrete shape.
Our path to an alternative solution involves digging down some five feet into the soil of the park until we reach the groundwater. There we dig a waterhole, a kind of well, to collect all of the London rain that falls in the area of the Pavilion. In that way we incorporate an otherwise invisible aspect of reality in the park – the water under the ground – into our Pavilion. As we dig down into the earth we encounter a diversity of constructed realities such as telephone cables and former foundations. Like a team of archaeologists, we identify these physical fragments as remains of the eleven Pavilions built between 2000 and 2011. Their shape varies: circular, long and narrow, dots and also large, constructed hollows that have been filled in… These remains testify to the existence of the former Pavilions and their greater or lesser intervention in the natural environment of the park.
All of these foundations will now be uncovered and reconstructed. The old foundations form a jumble of convoluted lines, like a sewing pattern. A distinctive landscape emerges out of the reconstructed foundations which is unlike anything we could have invented; its form and shape is actually a serendipitous gift. The three-dimensional reality of this landscape is astonishing and it is also the perfect place to sit, stand, lie down or just look and be amazed. In other words, the ideal environment for continuing to do what visitors have been doing in the Serpentine Gallery Pavilions over the past eleven years – and a discovery for the many new visitors anticipated for the London 2012 Olympic Games.
On the foundations of each single Pavilion, we extrude a new structure (supports, walls) as load-bearing elements for the roof of our Pavilion – eleven supports all told, plus our own column that we can place at will, like a wild card. The roof resembles that of an archaeological site. It floats a few feet above the grass of the park, so that everyone visiting can see the water on it, its surface reflecting the infinitely varied, atmospheric skies of London. For special events, the water can be drained off the roof as from a bathtub, from whence it flows back into the waterhole, the deepest point in the Pavilion landscape. The dry roof can then be used as a dance floor or simply as a platform suspended above the park.”
Cork is a natural material with wonderful haptic and olfactory qualities with the versatility to be carved, cut, shaped and formed, as demonstrated in many historical examples of cork architectural models.”
Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei
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