Spanish architects SelgasCano are designing the 15th Serpentine Pavilion. The award-winning studio, headed by José Selgas and Lucía Cano, is the first Spanish architecture practice to be asked to design the temporary Pavilion on the Serpentine’s lawn in London’s Kensington Gardens.
Over the past 15 years the Serpentine Pavilion has become an international site for architectural experimentation, presenting inspirational temporary structures by some of the world’s greatest architects. A much-anticipated landmark in London each summer, the Pavilion is one of the top-ten most visited architectural and design exhibitions in the world.
Spanish architects SelgasCano are designing the 15th Serpentine Pavilion. The award-winning studio, headed by José Selgas and Lucía Cano, is the first Spanish architecture practice to be asked to design the temporary Pavilion on the Serpentine’s lawn in London’s Kensington Gardens. In keeping with the criteria of the scheme, this will be the studio’s first new structure in the UK.
The design render shows an amorphous, double-skinned, polygonal structure consisting of panels of a translucent, multi-coloured fabric membrane (ETFE) woven through and wrapped in webbing. Visitors will be able to enter and exit the Pavilion at a number of different points, passing through a ‘secret corridor’ between the outer and inner layer of the structure and into the Pavilion’s brilliant, stained glass-effect interior.
As with previous Pavilion commissions, the brief is to design a flexible, multi-purpose social space with a café that is open to all throughout the summer. Previous Selgas Cano projects include the amorphous Plasencia Auditorium and Congress Centre, Cáceres; the light filled harbour-side structure of El ‘B’, Cartagena Auditorium and Congress Centre; the playful floating shapes of Mérida Factory Youth Movement. SelgasCano’s work is characterised by a use of synthetic materials and new technologies, often rarely applied to architecture. Taking inspiration from Luis Barragan and Richard Rogers, the architects use distinctive colours and references to nature throughout their designs. Their belief that architecture is secondary to nature also informs the design course on Nature and Climatology that they teach at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and their work on the Educational and Medical Pavilion in Turkana, Kenya.
José Selgas and Lucía Cano, who formed the practice SelgasCano in 1998 in Madrid, have completed the majority of their buildings in Spain through a diverse range of commissions. The studio is currently working on a number of projects worldwide, including Pip House, Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles; the renovation of Texas Square in Oranjestad, Aruba, Lesser Antilles; and La Canaria House, Mount Washington, Los Angeles.
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Serpentine Pavilion (25 Jun 2015 to 18 Oct 2015) / Private View: 23 Jun
Full info about it: http://www.serpentinegalleries.org/exhibitions-events/serpentine-pavilion-2015
Photo © SelgasCano