SANAA to design Serpentine Gallery Pavillion 2009
The Serpentine Gallery is delighted to announce that the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2009 will be designed by architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, of the leading Japanese practice SANAA. Sejima and Nishizawa’s Pavilion will be the architects’ first built structure in the UK and the ninth commission in the Gallery’s annual series of Pavilions, the world’s first and most ambitious architectural programme of its kind. The Pavilion will open in July on the Serpentine Gallery’s lawn, where it will remain until October.
Julia Peyton-Jones, Director, and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Co-Director, Serpentine Gallery, said: “It is our dream come true to be working with world-leading architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of SANAA. Their work will be a wonderful addition to the Pavilion series, the only commission of its kind worldwide that annually gives preeminent architects their debut in this country and brings the best of contemporary architecture to London for everyone to enjoy.”
For more information, go to the Serpentine Gallery official website, here.
A lot of people comparing Sanaa’s pavillion with Niemeyer’s Ibirapuera marquise( built in the 40′s). Actually a similar solution for a similar challenge: dwelling from the sun, rain, while integrating with a beautiful surrounding park… The diference here appears to be not only the scale but also the approach to the biefing itself. Ibirapuera marquise is enormous, when compared to Sanna’s pavillion – when you are under it, you feel quite protected, but also separated from the park (it has always intrigued me a lot) – the park looks like far away and, moreover, framed by the concrete structure – the so persued by modern architecture “integration” with nature, kind of say – “ok, nature is beautiful but lets keep it outside”, or “nature is beautiful, lets frame it then..”. and that’s exactly what Sanaa’s pavillion will not do. It is basically the same solution, but the 21st century approach for the “integration with nature” issue is quite different… it will hardly protect those bellow it from the usual bad weather of the londoner summer, and will still play with your senses, by creating reflections, distorted images, etc kind of borrowing the real trees, moan, and even the real visitors to create a new virtual, untangible park experience.
Simplicity, purity, etc has always linked the work of Niemeyer to those of japanese and maybe, scandinavian architects and designers. The great goal of this year’s pavillion is, in my oppinion, to show up such kind of architecture in Europe today, when most of the architects are depply seduced by the personalism, this strange ego trip and the media need of creating star architects, star designers, star musicians, star chefs, star dogs, stars, stars, stars…. when the true architecture is actually more than that, or lets put it better, architecture is less than that.
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Let’s be honest to ourselves… London could have done it better… you may come up with tons of excuses, but still it’s boring, dated, overdesigned, full of maneirisms… a shame… could hardly believe it was designed in London, 21st century… Hopefully nobody will depend on the Sails signs to find his way to the venue… its absolutely unrecogniseable…