The Serpentine Galleries in London have announced that Japanese architect Junya Ishigami has been chosen to design this year’s Serpentine Pavilion, with a vision that aims to create a “refuge for contemplation” in the midst of Kensington Gardens.
Ishigami, who worked as an architect with SANAA before founding his own practice, won the Golden Lion at the 2010 Venice Biennale of Architecture and was last year the subject of a solo exhibition at the Fondation Cartier in Paris that will travel to Shanghai’s Power Station of Art later this year.
Known for designs with “dream-like qualities” that incorporate elements of the natural world, he has envisioned a Serpentine Pavilion made by arranging slates to create a single canopy roof that will appear to emerge from the ground, while creating an enclosed, cave-like space that will serve as a “refuge for contemplation,” according to the Serpentine Galleries.
“My design for the Pavilion plays with our perspectives of the built environment against the backdrop of a natural landscape, emphasising a natural and organic feel as though it had grown out of the lawn, resembling a hill made out of rocks,” said Ishigami of his design. “Possessing the weighty presence of slate roofs seen around the world, and simultaneously appearing so light it could blow away in the breeze, the cluster of scattered rock levitates, like a billowing piece of fabric.”
Ishigami is the 19th architect to be chosen to design a temporary pavilion on the lawn of the Serpentine Gallery in Kensington Gardens, and his design will follow on from Frida Escobedo’s courtyard-based design for the program’s 2018 iteration.
Within the Serpentine Pavilion, an extensive program of events and exhibitions will run from June 20 to October 6. – Relaxnews
