[ Zaha Hadid ] Serpentine Pavilion London

Lilas

PROGRAM: Temporary tensile fabric Installation consisting of 3 parasols for the Serpentine Gallery’s Summer Party located in Kensington Gardens.
CLIENT: Serpentine Gallery
ARCHITECT: Design Zaha Hadid with Patrik Schumacher
Project Architect Kevin McClellan
CONSULTANTS: Structural ARUP
Steel Fabrication: Sheetfabs Ltd.
Membrane Fabrication: Base Structures Ltd.
Lighting design: Zumbotel
Furniture provided by: Estabished & Sons, Kenny Schachter, Sawaya & Moroni, Serralunga, Max Protetch, Swarovski

SIZE/AREA: Height 5.5 m Width 22.5 m Length 22.5 m Total Floor Area 310 m2

The Serpentine Summer Party Installation is designed as an open air space raising 5.5m that consists of three identical tensile fabric structures or parasols arrayed around a central point. Each parasol develops sculpturally from a small articulated base to a large cantilevered diamond shape. Taking inspiration from complex natural geometries such as flower petals and leaves the three parasols overlap to create the pavilion’s main conceptual feature: complex symmetry, interweaving all-the-while without touching, allowing air, light and sound to travel through narrow gaps in a state that is both open and likewise tending toward closure.

Raised on a low platform located within an open fi eld fl anked by a row of trees just South of the Serpentine Gallery, the Serpentine Summer Party Pavilion is free standing and accessible from all sides. Accommodating movement throughout the site, the Pavilion is enigmatic. In the day it provides shading, while at night the pavilion undergoes an energetic transformation into a source of illumination. From continuous lighting around each base, light is thrown up the fabric surfaces along very thin seams that radiate about the parasols that act like corseting or the veining of flowers revealing the geometric intricacy of the pavilion and highlighting the overall architectural form in calligraphic arcs.

Serpentine Gallery Pavilion info from Zaha Hadid Architects