Jacques Herzog, Ai Weiwei and Pierre de Meuron © Courtesy of Serpentine Gallery

Today, the Serpentine Gallery announced the team that will design the twelfth edition of the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, a special edition that will be part of the  London 2012 Festival, the culmination of the Cultural Olympiad.

Every year the gallery invites a renowned international architects who has not built yet in the UK, to design a temporary pavilion that hosts public activities in at the Gallery’s lawn, in London’s Hyde Park between June and October 2012. The list of architects for the past editions includes several Pritzker laureates. More info of this program at our Serpentine Gallery Pavilion infographic.

This years teams includes Pritzker laureate architects Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron, and Chinese artist Ai Weiwei (runner up of TIME’s 2011 Person of the Year). The trio has worked together in projects such as ORDOS 100 in the Mongolian desert and the Beijing National Stadium for the 2008 Olympic Games. As a trio they don’t have any built projects in the UK, but Herzog & de Meuron have been involved in several, including the Tate Modern renovation and its current expansion.

Their design will explore the  hidden history of the previous installations (more info), with eleven columns under the lawn of the Serpentine, representing the past pavilions and a twelfth column supporting a floating platform roof 1.5 metres above ground. Taking an archaeological approach, the architects have created a design that will inspire visitors to look beneath the surface of the park as well as back in time across the ghosts of the earlier structures.

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via Wikipedia

Chinese artist Ai Weiwei was selected as one of the runner-up candidates for TIMES 2011 Person of the Year Award. Ai Weiwei is known in the architecture world for his collaboration with Herzog & de Meuron, serving as the artistic consultant for the Beijing National Stadium, otherwise known as the Bird’s Nest stadium.

Ai Weiwei is well-known for his political activism, being openly critical of the Chinese government’s stance on democracy and human rights. Following his arrest in Beijing earlier this year, Weiwei was detained and interrogated for over two months without any official charges. He was then fined $2.4 million for back taxes and penalties, which he believes to have been politically motivated.

When TIME journalists Hannah Beech and Austin Ramzy asked Weiwei about what motivated him to merge the Internet with political activism, he credited his involvement with architecture.

“I got involved with architecture. To work in architecture you are so much involved with society, with politics, with bureaucrats. It’s a very complicated process to do large projects. You start to see the society, how it functions, how it works. Then you have a lot of criticism about how it works.”

Read the entire TIME article and full interview with Ai Weiwei here.

The work of Ai Weiwei was recently showcased at the Kunsthaus by Peter Zumthor in Bregenz, Austria. His collaborative work within the architectural arena was the main focus, filling all 3 floors with various projects. More after the break.

The first floor of the exhibition starts  with a very grounded presentation of architectural projects with displays ranging from architectural models, plans, photos, and video documentation of his various collaborative efforts – most notably the Bird’s Nest with renowned architects Herzog and de Meuron. The 2nd floor features the works of the 2011 Ordos 100 projects, followed by the 3rd floor exhibition with abstract and minimal architectural works such as the Moon Chest.

Three Shadows Photography Art Centre

“You’re not going to find any of Ai Weiwei’s work being shown in Beijing”, said each Beijing gallery representative. That’s because the artist and agent provocateur has been detained for 80 days now was released today, from what the government is saying was based on “economic charges”. The name “Ai Weiwei” has joined a long list of sensitive words in this country, and associating yourself with the artist has become tantamount to asking for trouble. Just ask the Chinese curator who was questioned by authorities after putting Ai Weiwei’s name under a blank wall in Beijing’s Incident Art Festival.

While Beijing’s lively art scene might currently be scrubbed clean of Ai Weiwei’s work, there’s one thing that’s a little difficult to “harmonize” away, as it’s known here. In 1999, Ai Weiwei began moving into the world of architecture, establishing his own architecture studio called FAKE design four years later. So Ai Weiwei’s artistic vision continues to stand in the form of buildings across the nation’s capital. The most concentrated of these is the artist district of Caochangdi, a few kilometres north of the more commercial art district called 798. It’s also the location of the artist’s studio and where he headed straight to after his release.

More after the break. read more »

Architects: HHF Architects + Ai WeiWei
Location: Ancram, New York, USA
Design Team: HERLACH HARTMANN FROMMENWILER & AI WEIWEI with Bhavana Hameed, Tom Strub, Fumiko Takahama, Magnus Zwyssig
Structural Engineering: Crawford & Associates, Hudson, NY
Construction Management: Crawford & Associates, Hudson, NY
General Contractor: Robert Reed Construction, Germantown, NY
Design year: 2005-2006
Construction year: 2006-2008
Client: Private
Constructed Area: 375 sqm
Photographs: Iwan Baan, Nikolas Koenig

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Architects: HHF Architects + Ai WeiWei
Location: Salt Point, New York, USA
Design Team: HERLACH HARTMANN FROMMENWILER & AI WEIWEI with Tom Strub, Fumiko Takahama
Structural Engineering: Crawford & Associates, Hudson, NY
Construction Management: Crawford & Associates, Hudson, NY
Design year: 2006-2007
Construction year: 2007-2008
Client: Christophe W. Mao / Chambers Fine Art
Budget: US $321,700
Constructed Area: 373 sqm
Photographs: Iwan Baan

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