Lebanon-born, Paris-based architect Lina Ghotmeh has just been announced as the designer behind the coveted Serpentine Pavilion 2023 commission. The project, an image of which has also been unveiled today, will represent the pavilion's 22nd iteration, set to open in London's Kensington Gardens. The architect is now joining the star-studded list of past Serpentine architectural pavilion creators, which spans from Zaha Hadid (2000) to Francis Kéré (2017), Frida Escobedo (2018), and Theaster Gates (last year's commission).
'We are thrilled to present Lina Ghotmeh’s first structure in the UK here at Serpentine next summer,' say Bettina Korek, chief executive, and Hans Ulrich Obrist, artistic director at Serpentine Galleries. 'Her design for À table [the pavilion] draws on natural elements that reflect its surroundings in Kensington Gardens and expands on our mission of creating connections between architecture and society by promoting unity and togetherness in its form and function. We are endlessly grateful to our loyal partners and supporters, for making Ghotmeh’s brilliant concept for a pavilion built from state-of-the-art sustainable materials into an inspiring reality, for the people of London and for our visitors from around the world to enjoy all summer. As Etel Adnan once told us, “The world needs togetherness, not separation. Love, not suspicion. A common future, not isolation“.'
Lina Ghotmeh
Ghotmeh is head of her eponymous practice, Lina Ghotmeh – Architecture, based in Paris. Her portfolio includes a range of commissions, from public to private work, and from cultural to commercial, operating internationally. The architect has already scooped a multitude of awards including the 2020 Schelling Architecture Prize. She teaches architecture and is a member of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture 2022 jury.
Lina Ghotmeh and the Serpentine Pavilion 2023
Ghotmeh's design for the Serpentine Pavilion 2023 is titled À table – a 'French call for people to sit down together at a table'. It is conceived to nod to ideas of unity and discussion, common ground and meaningful human interaction.
'À table is an invitation to dwell together, in the same space and around the same table. It is an encouragement to enter into a dialogue, to convene and to think about how we could reinstate and re-establish our relationship to nature and the Earth,' says Ghotmeh. 'The Earth that embraces us is our first source of sustenance; without it, we living beings could not survive. Rethinking what and how much we eat – how we “consume” and how we weave our relationships to one another and the living world – moves us towards a more sustainable, eco-systemic communion with the Earth. Our “cuisine” grounds us home; it reminds us how linked we are to the climates in which we grew up. As a Mediterranean woman, born and raised in Beirut, and living in Paris, I feel a deep belonging to our ground, to what it contains, and to what it embraces: from the buried yet weathering archaeologies of past civilisations to the embedded living world that spurs green life to sprout from every crack in the streets.'
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