Counterspace's Serpentine Pavilion will be both one and many places for gathering
by Stu Robarts | 13 Feb 2020
– Sumayya Vally
Counterspace have been chosen to design the Serpentine Pavilion for 2020 with a design based on gathering spaces and community places around London that will be accompanied by a public programme across the city.
Now in its 20th year, the annual pavilion commission is described by the Serpentine as "a global platform for experimental projects by some of the world's greatest architects."
This year's architects from the Johannesburg-based practice – Sumayya Vally, Sarah de Villiers and Amina Kaskar – are the youngest ever to have won the commission.
They have conceived their pavilion as a place for debate and new ideas and create other such places around the city by using movable parts of the pavilion to run community events around the city.
The pavilion will be constructed using sustainable materials including Kenoteq's K-Briq modules, which are produced from 90 per cent recycled construction waste, and cork.
Lead architect Sumayya Vally said: 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.
"The breaks, gradients and distinctions in colour and texture between different parts of the pavilion make this reconstruction and piecing together legible at a glance. As an object, experience through movement, it has continuity and consistency, but different and variation are embedded into the essential gesture at every turn.
"Places of memory and care in Brixton, Hoxton, Hackney, Whitechapel, Edgware Road, Peckham, Ealing, North Kensington and beyond are transferred onto the Serpentine lawn. Where they intersect, they produce spaces together."
Counterspace Serpentine pavilion Serpentine Pavilion
It will be constructed using sustainable materials including K-Briq modules and cork Credit: Counterspace
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Counterspace have been chosen to design the Serpentine Pavilion for 2020 with a design based on gathering spaces and community places around London that will be accompanied by a public programme across the city. Now in its 20th year, the annual pavilion commission is described by the Serpentine as "a global platform for experimental projects by some of the world's greatest architects." This year's architects from the Johannesburg-based practice –
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