The Serpentine Gallery has unveiled SelgasCano's designs for the 2015 Serpentine Pavilion in London, revealing a brightly-colored "chrysalis" structure created from a double skin of ETFE membrane wrapped in webbing. The Madrid-based duo were announced as the project's designers in December, joining the prestigious list of past pavilion designers which includes SANAA (2009), Jean Nouvel (2010), Peter Zumthor (2011), Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei (2012), Sou Fujimoto (2013), and last year's designer Smiljan Radić, among many others.
More on the pavilion, and SelgasCano's statement after the break.
Each year, the Serpentine Gallery offers the commission to a designer who has yet to complete any work in the UK (although shortly after the announcement in December, SelgasCano revealed their first project in London). Since its launch in 2000 the program has helped world-renowned designers such as Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas and Oscar Niemeyer to build their first project in the UK.
"In keeping with their reputation for playful designs and bold use of color, SelgasCano’s structure will be an extraordinary chrysalis-like structure, as organic as the surrounding gardens," said Serpentine Gallery Directors Julia Peyton-Jones and Hans Ulrich Obrist. "We can’t wait to go inside to experience the light diffused through the colored panels like stained glass windows."
SelgasCano explained their project by saying:
When the Serpentine invited us to design the Pavilion, we began to think about what the structure needed to provide and what materials should be used in a Royal Park in London. These questions, mixed with our own architectural interests and the knowledge that the design needs to connect with nature and feel part of the landscape, provided us with a concept based on pure visitor experience. We sought a way to allow the public to experience architecture through simple elements: structure, light, transparency, shadows, lightness, form, sensitivity, change, surprise, color and materials. We have therefore designed a Pavilion which incorporates all of these elements. The spatial qualities of the Pavilion only unfold when accessing the structure and being immersed within it. Each entrance allows for a specific journey through the space, characterized by color, light and irregular shapes with surprising volumes. This is accomplished by creating a double-layered shell, made of opaque and translucent fluorine-based plastic (ETFE) in a variety of colors. At the heart of the Pavilion is an open space for gathering as well as a café.
