21 Feb 2013
Sou Fujimoto to design Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2013
BY Jessica Tasman-Jones
Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto has been appointed to design the temporary Serpentine Gallery Pavilion for 2013, which will open in London's Kensington Gardens in June.
Fujimoto's design vision for the 350sq m space is a latticed structure with a semi-transparent appearance that will see it blend with the landscape and the gallery's colonnaded east wing.
For the first time design firm AECOM will provide technical and engineering services for pavilion.
Stepped terraces will provide seating areas that will allow the pavilion to be used as a social space as well as a gallery.
Fujimoto said: "The delicate quality of the structure, enhanced by its semi-transparency, will create a geometric, cloud-like form, as if it were mist rising from the undulations of the park.
Fujimoto takes inspiration from organic structures such as forests, nests and caves, and has previously worked on projects such as the Musahino Art Museum and Library the Children's Psychiatric Rehabilitation Centre, for which he won the Japanese Institute of Architects Grand Prize in 2008.
Established in 2000, the temporary Serpentine Gallery Pavilion attracts 300,000 visitors annually and is one of the top 10 most visited architectural and design attractions in the world.
At 41-years-old Fujimoto is the youngest architect commissioned to design the pavilion, and follows in the footsteps of Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei, and Frank Gehry.
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