Ishigami's 'Billowing' Serpentine Pavilion Unveiled
Japanese architect Junya Ishigami has been selected to design the 2019 Serpentine Pavilion. Renderings reveal a slate canopy effortlessly lifted above the landscape of Kensington Gardens on a grid of stilts.
Today's announcement from the Serpentine Galleries was accompanied by a couple renderings, one showing the water puddling on and dripping across the exterior surface of the slate canopy, the other depicting the compressed, cave-like space beneath the canopy. Without any walls or means of partitioning the space beyond the grid of pilotis, the design articulates Ishigami's "free space" philosophy "in which he seeks harmony between man-made structures and those that already exist in nature," per a statement from Serpentine Galleries.
Ishigami's description of the pavilion design:
Ishigami's pavilion design immediately recalls his most well-known building, the KAIT Workswhop in Japan. Completed in 2008, four years after Ishigami founded his firm following a stint at SANAA, the building is basically a one-story open space beneath a flat roof propped up by slender columns of various sizes. The Serpentine Pavilion's pooling roof also recalls the minimal water garden he created for Art Biotop Nasu last year.
- 2018: Frida Escobedo (Mexico)
- 2017: Francis Kéré (Germany)
- 2016: Bjarke Ingels (Denmark)
- 2015: SelgasCano (Spain)
- 2014: Smiljan Radić (Chile)
- 2013: Sou Fujimoto (Japan)
The 2019 Serpentine Pavilion will be built on the lawn next to the Serpentine Gallery in London's Kensington Gardens and will be on display from June 20 – October 6, 2019.