New Museum Architects Selected For London's 2009 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion
The structure will be the ninth commission in the gallery's annual pavilion series.
Nicholas Tamarin -- Interior Design, 3/13/2009 12:00:00 AM
Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of SANAA, photo by Takashi Okamoto.
If summer showers dampen your trip to London’s Serpentine Gallery this July, SANAA principals Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa promise shelter from the storm –- the debut of a new temporary pavilion on the gallery’s lawn that will also be the firm’s first built structure in the U.K.
Set to serve as a café and venue for public events through October, SANAA’s commission represents the ninth edition of the annual Serpentine Gallery Pavilion series. Up to 250,000 visitors typically visit the structures, which are always designed by a firm that has no built projects in the country. Time is also of the essence, as the selected practice has just six months to conceive and plan the project prior to groundbreaking.
Olafur Eliasson and Kjetil Thorsen's 2007 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, photo by John Offenbach; Frank Gehry's 2008 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, photo by Iwan Baan
Construction of the pavilion is funded in part by business airline operator NetJets Europe, now in its second year as lead sponsor of the series. Advisors to the project include Mutsuro Sasaki's structural design and engineering firm SAPS, and consulting engineer and project manager Arup.
SANAA, the Japanese architecture firm behind New York's highly acclaimed New Museum of Contemporary Art, will join an elite group of past pavilion-series participants, including architectural legends Frank Gehry, Rem Koolhaas, Oscar Niemeyer, Toyo Ito, Daniel Libeskind and Zaha Hadid.
Left: SANAA's New Museum in New York, photo copyright Kazuyo Sejima + Ryue Nishizawa/SANAA.
All images courtesy of Serpentine Gallery.
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