Japanese practice SANAA’s design for Kensington Gardens’ Serpentine Gallery in London opens this weekend and the first images of the finished structure have just been revealed.
The Tokyo-based studio, which is currently the subject of an exhibition of architecture at the The Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation in Sydney’s Paddington, is famous for innovative and subversive structures and the Serpentine’s “temporary wing” is no exception.
Made from a single wafer of horizontal alumunium that has been polished to a mirror, the structure camouflages itself by reflecting the surrounding trees and lawns. The studio’s first built structure in England, the aluminium and stainless steel structure took just six months from commission to completion.
The British press has dubbed the umbrella-like structure “delightful” and “gracious”, the temporary building is “the architectural equivalent of a walk in the park”, the Guardian said.
“The pavilion is designed to amplify the way things look,” Ryue Nishizawa, one of SANAA’s two founding partners, said.
??This play on perception is also visible in the studio’s New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, where SANAA said was trying to create a “transparent” building that didn’t hide what was going on behind the surface.
The structure will be open to the public in Kensington Gardens until 18 October, before being sold to a private buyer. The pavilion is an annual structure of the Serpentine Gallery, which is located just outside the gallery itself in Kensington Gardens. The building “becomes the public’s town square” for its three-month stint, gallery director Julia Peyton-Jones said.
Previous designers include Frank Gehry, 2008; Olafur Eliasson and Kjetil Thorsen, 2007; Rem Koolhaas and Cecil Balmond, with Arup, 2006; Álvaro Siza and Eduardo Souto de Moura with Cecil Balmond, Arup, 2005; MVRDV with Arup, 2004 (un-realised); Oscar Niemeyer, 2003; Toyo Ito with Arup, 2002; Daniel Libeskind with Arup, 2001; and Zaha Hadid, 2000.
Sydney’s Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation is exhibiting Kazuyo Sejima + Ryue Nishizawa / SANAA until 26 September 2009.
