SERPENTINE PAVILION ANNUAL COMMISSION CELEBRATES 25 YEARS

The Serpentine Pavilion celebrates its 25th anniversary, marking a quarter-century of architectural commissions in London. Since 2000, the Serpentine Pavilion has served as an annual platform for experimental architecture, inviting leading contemporary architecture firms such as BIG, Studio Libeskind, Zaha Hadid Architects, and OMA to create temporary structures in Kensington Gardens. BIG’s 2016 Serpentine Pavilion features an unzipped ‘wall’ that 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 aspects that are often perceived as opposites: a structure that is free-form yet rigorous, modular yet sculptural, transparent and opaque, box and blob.