ELLE DECOR RECOUNTS 25 YEARS OF THE SERPENTINE PAVILION

The 2016 Serptentine Pavilion, designed by BIG, is featured in a visual retrospective celebrating 25 years of the Serpentine Pavilion by Elle Decor. The Serpentine Pavilion is an annual architectural commission by the Serpentine Gallery in London, inviting internationally renowned architects to design and realize their first built structure in the UK. Over the years, the Pavilion has become a globally recognized platform for architectural experimentation, showcasing groundbreaking work by some of the world’s leading architects. For the 2016 Pavilion, BIG decided to work with one of the most basic elements of architecture: the brick wall. Rather than clay bricks or stone blocks, the wall is erected from extruded fiberglass frames stacked on top of each other. The unzipped Serpentine ‘wall’ creates a cave-like canyon lit through the fiberglass frames, the gaps between the shifted boxes, and the translucent resin of the fiberglass. As a result, the structure embodies multiple aspects that are often perceived as opposites: a structure that is freeform yet rigorous, modular yet sculptural, transparent and opaque, box and blob.