BIG to Design 2016 Serpentine Pavilion
John Hill
10. February 2016
BIG: The Mountain, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2007 (Photo: Iwan Baan)
London's Serpentine Gallery has announced the selection of Denmark's BIG – Bjarke Ingels Group to design the 16th pavilion in Kensington Gardens, to be accompanied by four summer houses designed by architects from Europe and Africa.
BIG has been selected to design the 300-sm pavilion that will be used for a cafe during the day and "a forum for learning, debate and entertainment at night," per a statement from the Serpentine Gallery. He is joined by four architects spanning in age from 36 to 93 who will design 25-sm Summer Houses: Kunlé Adeyemi – NLÉ (Amsterdam/Lagos); Barkow Leibinger (Berlin); Yona Friedman (Paris); and Asif Khan (London).
The previous two pavilions were designed by architects (SelgasCano from Spain in 2015; Smiljan Radić from Chile in 2014) who were lesser known than their predecessors: Herzog & de Meuron with Ai Weiwei (2012), Peter Zumthor (2011), Jean Nouvel (2010), Frank Gehry (2008), and Rem Koolhaas (2006), to name a few. The selection of Ingels, easily one of the most popular architects in the world right now, is a shift toward more established names. Whatever the case, he and the four Summer House architects fit the Serpentine criteria of having yet to realize a permanent building in England.
The expanded scheme will be the last for Serpentine Gallery director Julia Peyton-Jones, who launched the Serpentine Pavilion in 2000; she steps down in July after 25 years. Along with the MoMA PS1 competition, the Serpentine Pavilion has become one of the most important annual commissions for contemporary architecture.
The five structures, sponsored by Goldman Sachs, will be on dipslay in Kensington Gardens from 10 June to 9 October 2016.
