2018 – Frida Escobedo: The dark latticed walls of Escobedo’s pavilion are intended as a play on the celosia – a common trope in Mexican architecture that allows breeze to flow through buildings. A café sits at one end, while a shallow pool of water runs on one long side, adding to the overall serene atmosphere
The pavilion’s pivoted axis aligns with the Prime Meridian line that was established in Greenwich, London in 1851 and later became the global standard for marking time and geographical distance
Escobedo considered the final installation site of her pavilion, focusing on time, temporality and personal experience during the design process. Inspired by La Mezquita [The Mosque] in Cordoba, the pavilion is a closed courtyard inside a park, within the city of London; a Russian doll of interiors. The pavilion’s polygonal structure creates three spaces – two smaller courtyards and a central one – constructed from porous walls and British roof tiles, creating a lattice.
2016 – Francis Kéré: Kéré looked to village life for his design, and the notion of a paviliion as a shelter or meeting point. Supported by a light steel framed trunk, the structure has timber brise soleil eaves extending over like the canopy of a tree, creating a dappled light effect, while above, layers of clear polycarbonate panels shelter the internal space. Photography: Iwan Baan. Copyright: Kéré Architecture
Four entrances naturally open up between the indigo walls, allowing a flow of people into the pavilion. The structure also paid respect to the British climate with rain water flowing from the polycarbonate roof, down into the central core where a waterfall will process water to be collected through drainage channels in the poured concrete. Photography: Iwan Baan. Copyright: Kéré Architecture
2016 – BIG: This year’s Serpentine pavillion, designed by Bjarke Ingels’ BIG, was built from extruded square tubes of glass fibre, reinforced and bolted together using hundreds of T-shaped aluminium brackets. Photography: Iwan Baan
