Summer 2019 Pavilions Pop Up Across the Globe
SelgasCano’s 2015 Serpentine Pavilion in Los Angeles
SelgasCano’s prismatic 2015 Serpentine Pavilion is the first of the 19 structures built for the Serpentine Gallery’s annual program to travel to the United States. Originally installed in London’s Kensington Gardens, the cocoon-like structure, wrapped in a multicolored translucent ETFE membrane, has been reassembled on the grounds of the La Brea Tar Pits—the only active urban Ice Age excavation site in the world—where it will remain for the next five months. The new location will host a diverse program of talks, film screenings, and other events organized by Second Home, a London-based coworking operator, and the Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County. Second Home’s first U.S. location, in L.A., also designed by SelgasCano, is scheduled to open in September.
Photo © Iwan Baan
Hórama Rama by Pedro y Juana at MoMA PS1
Hórama Rama, this year’s winner of the Museum of Modern Art’s 2019 Young Architects Program, by Mexico City–based Pedro & Juana, is a 40-foot-high, 90-foot-diameter cyclorama that brings seating, shade, and even a waterfall to MoMA PS1’s courtyard in Queens, NY. The design creates a playground of scaffolding, partially shaded by some 2,000 wood “bristles” protruding from its cylindrical armature. The seasonal structure is the home of PS1’s annual Warm Up summer concert series and will be open until September.
Photo © Rafael Gamo
Junya Ishigami at Kensington Gardens
Billowing over the green of London’s Kensington Gardens like a jagged stone sail, Junya Ishigami’s 2019 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion has a thin canopy, heaped with thick flakes of loose-laid slate, which rises from three corners. As Ishigami suggests, the deliberately random composition of varying sized stones helps to create the impression of a natural feature but also recalls examples of vernacular architecture, lending the structure a kind of universal context, and reflecting the Japanese architect’s long-standing preoccupation with the interplay between man-made and natural environments.
Photo © Norbert Tukaj
Colour Palace at Dulwich Picture Gallery
For a few months, Colour Palace is brightening the sky at the Dulwich Picture Gallery in South London. This summer’s pavilion, designed by British-Nigerian artist Yinka Ilori with architect Pricegore, is the second iteration of the competition organized by the gallery and the London Festival of Architecture. The 32-foot-tall polychromatic structure’s facade of wooden slats features a geometric pattern inspired by fabrics in the markets of Lagos, Nigeria. It sits atop four red precast-concrete rings and is held together by a blue fir frame and a series of cables and brackets. The temporary structure will host outdoor events through September 22.
Photo © Adam Scott
A Pavilion on Roosevelt Island by Somewhere Studio
Salvage Swings, a project by Fayetteville, Arkansas-based architecture practice Somewhere Studio, is the winner of this year’s City of Dreams Pavilion competition, which aims to encourage sustainability among architects and designers. (RECORD senior editor Joann Gonchar, FAIA, served on the design jury.) Using scrap timber salvaged from a construction project at the University of Arkansas, the team built 12 boxy modules on New York’s Roosevelt Island; each frames a single swing. The side-by-side structures, with roofs alternately sloping different ways, arranged in a triangle, enable games such as hide-and-seek.
Photo © Somewhere Studio LLC
Mark Dion: Follies at Storm King
“My concept of a folly is somewhere between the traditional one of the aristocracy, and the vernacular,” says artist Mark Dion. His 13 highly diverse structures at Storm King—from a glass menagerie and a grotto embedded in the landscape to a reed-clad hunting blind and a truck that serves as a mobile laboratory—are instructional and enchanting, especially within the context of the Hudson River Valley art center’s 500 rolling acres and its monumental sculptures. On view until November 11, this exhibition includes pieces created and modified over the last 25 years, as well as a new site-specific work entitled Storm King Environmental Field Station.
Photo © Jeffrey Jenkins
In the U.S. and the UK, this year’s roster of seasonal pavilions, representing a medley of unusual geometries, bold colors, and textured materials, keep visitors cool in the shade. Click through the slideshow above for a roundup of summer structures.
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