Design rendering of the 2019 Serpentine Pavilion. Photo: Junya Ishigami + Associates.

February 14, 2019 at 3:34pm

JAPANESE ARCHITECT JUNYA ISHIGAMI WILL DESIGN 2019 SERPENTINE PAVILION

The Tokyo-based architect Junya Ishigami has been selected to design the nineteenth Serpentine Pavilion—the temporary structure erected each year in London’s Hyde Park. Commissioned by the Serpentine Galleries, the work will take the form of a canopy of slate raised above Kensington Gardens.

“My design for the pavilion plays with our perspectives of the built environment against the backdrop of a natural landscape, emphasizing a natural and organic feel as though it had grown out of the lawn, resembling a hill made out of rocks,” Ishigami said. The inspiration for the structure comes from one of the most common architectural features used around the world: roofs. According to the architect, it will appear as a cluster of scattered rocks that “levitates, like a billowing piece of fabric.”

Born in 1974, Ishigami worked as an architect at SANAA before founding his own firm, Junya Ishigami + Associates, in 2004. A former winner of the Golden Lion Award at the Venice Biennale of Architecture, Ishigami was the subject of a major solo exhibition at the Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain in 2018 that will travel to the Power Station of Art in Shanghai later this year.

Ishigami was chosen for the commission by Serpentine Galleries’ artistic director, Hans Ulrich Obrist, and CEO, Yana Peel, with advisors David Adjaye; Lord Richard Rogers; David Glover; Julie Burnell, the galleries’ head of construction and building; and Amira Gad, the galleries’ curator, exhibitions and architecture.

Zaha Hadid designed the first Serpentine Pavilion in 2000. Since then, Frida Escobedo of Mexico, Francis Kéré of Burkina Faso, and Bjarke Ingels of Denmark, among others, have had their designs realized. Ishigami’s structure will be unveiled in June.