With a team of directors under 30, Johannesburg-based practice Counterspace is the youngest group of architects ever selected to design the Serpentine Pavilion. This year's awaited pavilion will comprise a spliced structure, based on community spaces around the city of London.
The annual architecture commission of a temporary structure is located on the lawn outside the Serpentine Gallery in London’s Kensington gardens. Open 11 June-11 October 2020, it will be constructed from cork and K-Briqs, which are made without firing, from 90 per cent demolition and construction waste.
The all-woman lead team is lead by its three directors, Sumayya Vally, Sarah de Villiers and Amina Kaska who all turn 30 this year. The trio vows that the pavilion, now its 20th year, to be one of the most sustainable to date. Previous winners of the commission include Zaha Hadid, Francis Kéré, Toyo Ito and Frank Gehry.
Counterspace’s concept poses a question: How can architecture create a space where we are all linked, not ranked? In answer, Counterspace’s architectural forms will include small, moveable parts, which will eventually be used beyond Kensington Gardens to create a series of local community events, before being returned to the structure.
‘These forms are imprints of some of the places, spaces and artefacts which have made care and sustenance part of London’s identity’
Distinctions in colour and texture between different parts of the pavilion will reference migrant communities from London, such as Brixton, Hoxton, Hackney, Whitechapel, Edgware Road, Peckham, Ealing, North Kensington. Sumayya Vally says: ‘The pavilion is itself conceived as an event — the coming together of a variety of forms from across London over the course of the Pavilion’s sojourn. These forms are imprints of some of the places, spaces and artefacts which have made care and sustenance part of London’s identity.’
Amina Kaskar, Sumayya Vally and Sarah de Villiers of Counterspace. © Counterspace
With the idea pointing towards inclusivity, the pavilion will be closely integrated with both the institution's art and architecture programs this summer, connecting with the Serpentine’s ambitious multi-platform project Back to Earth that will invite artists’ response to the ever-pressing climate emergency.
Vally adds: ‘Places of memory and care in and beyond are transferred onto the Serpentine lawn. Where they intersect, they produce spaces to be together’.
INFORMATION
The Serpentine Pavilion 2020 is on view from 11 June. serpentinegalleries.org
-
Itapororoca House is nestled in the Brazilian forest overlooking its leafy coastal contextDesigned by Bloco Arquitetos, Itapororoca House is a treetop residence in Bahia, Brazil, offering a large wrap-around veranda to invite nature in
-
Sophie Smallhorn’s plywood tables for Uncommon Projects are colourful and modularThese modular tables by the artist and the plywood specialist play with colour for function, fun and flexibility
-
Aldo Frattini Bivouac is a mountain shelter, but not as you know itA new mountain shelter on the northern Italian pre-Alp region of Val Seriana, Aldo Frattini Bivouac is an experimental and aesthetically rich, compact piece of architecture
-
A life’s work: Hans Ulrich Obrist on art, meaning and being drivenAs the curator, critic and artistic director of Serpentine Galleries publishes his memoir, ‘Life in Progress’, he tells us what gets him out of bed in the morning
-
Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley’s multiplayer experience at London’s Serpentine invites visitors to connect in the real worldDanielle Brathwaite-Shirley rethinks a typical art gallery visit with a new exhibition at Serpentine which encourages viewers to get off the screen
-
Looking at people looking at art: inside the mind of a gallery attendantVisitor experience workers at London’s Tate Modern, Serpentine, Barbican and V&A share what it’s like to watch people looking at art during a time of changing attention spans and rising vandalism
-
Gerhard Richter unveils new sculpture at Serpentine SouthGerhard Richter revisits themes of pattern and repetition in ‘Strip-Tower’ at London’s Serpentine South
-
Tomás Saraceno’s spider-led show at Serpentine has legs, and lots of them‘Web(s) of Life’, the first major UK show by Tomás Saraceno, is a living, collaborative and multi-species call to climate action involving everything from dog-friendly sculptures to ‘spider diviners’ – but no phones allowed
-
Steve McQueen to screen his harrowing film 'Grenfell' at London’s SerpentineAcclaimed film director and artist Steve McQueen will screen his film, Grenfell, at London’s Serpentine South gallery (7 April-10 May 2023), six years after the Grenfell Tower block blaze killed 72
-
Barbara Chase-Riboud at Serpentine: alternative monuments, parallel histories‘Infinite Folds’ at Serpentine North Gallery celebrates Barbara Chase-Riboud, the American artist, novelist and poet who has spent more than seven decades pondering history, memory, and the public monument
-
Niemeyer pavilion enriches the landscape at Château La CosteChâteau La Coste's latest architecture addition is a sculptural pavilion designed by the late, great Oscar Niemeyer
