Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2013 © Sou Fujimoto Architects Image © 2013 Iwan Baan

Sou Fujimoto’s Serpentine Gallery Pavilion

Sou Fujimoto is the thirteenth and, at 41, youngest architect to accept the invitation to design a temporary structure for the Serpentine Gallery. The most ambitious architectural programme of its kind worldwide, the Serpentine’s annual Pavilion commission is one of the most anticipated events on the cultural calendar.

Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2013 © Sou Fujimoto Architects Image © 2013 Iwan Baan

Widely acknowledged as one of the most important architects coming to prominence worldwide, Sou Fujimoto is the leading light of an exciting generation of artists who are re-inventing our relationship with the built environment. Inspired by organic structures, such as the forest, the nest and the cave, Fujimoto’s signature buildings inhabit a space between nature and artificiality. Fujimoto has completed the majority of his buildings in Japan, with commissions ranging from the domestic, such as Final Wooden House, T House and House N, to the institutional, such as the Musashino Art Museum and Library at Musashino Art University.

Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2013 © Sou Fujimoto Architects Image © 2013 Iwan Baan

Occupying some 350 square-metres of lawn in front of the Serpentine Gallery, Sou Fujimoto’s delicate, latticed structure of 20mm steel poles will have a lightweight and semi-transparent appearance that will allow it to blend, cloud-like, into the landscape and against the classical backdrop of the Gallery’s colonnaded East wing. Designed as a flexible, multi-purpose social space – with a café sited inside – visitors will be encouraged to enter and interact with the Pavilion in different ways throughout its four-month tenure in London’s Kensington Gardens.

Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2013 © Sou Fujimoto Architects Image © 2013 Iwan Baan

The Serpentine Gallery Pavilion is officially open to the public from June 8th to October 20th, 2013.

more. www.serpentinegallery.org