Serpentine Galleries has revealed the designs for its expanded 2016 Architecture Programme. With the aim of introducing contemporary architecture to a wider audience, the site in London’s Kensington Gardens will showcase a range of different exhibits.
The 16th annual Serpentine Pavilion will be designed by Copenhagen and New York-based Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG). Taking the form of an ‘unzipped wall’ the dramatic fibreglass brick structure will by day house a café and free family activities.
By night it will act as a space for the Serpentine’s Park Nights programme of performative works by artists, writers and musicians.
In addition, for the first time four newly-commissioned Summer Houses will be created by Kunlé Adeyemi (Amsterdam/Lagos), Barkow Leibinger (Berlin/New York), Yona Friedman (Paris) and Asif Khan (London). They have been inspired by Queen Caroline’s Temple, a classical style summer house built in 1734 that is also located in Kensington Gardens.
Outgoing Serpentine Galleries director, Julia Peyton-Jones, and co-director, Hans Ulrich Obrist, said: “Bjarke Ingels has responded to the brief for a multi-purpose pavilion with a supremely elegant structure that is both curvaceous wall and soaring spire, that will surely serve as a beacon – drawing visitors across Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens to visit the Pavilion, the Summer Houses and our major exhibitions by Alex Katz and Etel Adnan.
“The response to design a Summer House inspired by the 18th Century Queen Caroline’s Temple by our four international architects has been equally inspired and has produced four unique spaces for visitors to explore this summer.”
The Serpentine’s Pavilion commission was first conceived in 2000 by Peyton-Jones, and has become an international site for architectural experimentation, presenting projects by some of the world’s best known architects. Past commissions include Frank Gehry (2008), Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei (2012) and SelgasCano (2015).
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