So, on the hottest day of the year so far, I finally managed to drag myself down to London’s Hyde Park to see Sou Fujimoto’s Serpentine Pavilion. I was already a big fan of Sou Fujimoto (See some previous posts here) and was excited when the Serpentine Gallery announced that the Japanese architect would be designing this year’s pavilion at the beginning of the year. But after all the images in the media, not to mention on Facebook and Instagram, I became dubious that the ‘cloud-like’ structure would live up to the hype. At first glance it looked just like a beautiful object and not a functioning space you would want to linger in.
My visit on Saturday at once changed my mind. It was larger than I thought and had more of a sense of place that I had envisioned. From afar the structure blends together to form a majestic sculptural form, but it really gets interesting when you get closer up, and discover gaps and viewpoints through the white frame and into the cafe space. Fujimoto has quite cleverly clustered the structure together in some areas and not in others to create perspectives and open up the form to the surrounding landscape.
While children used it as a precarious climbing frame, adults used the steps as seats or sat in the shade of the plastic umbrella-like discs. I went to see it on the best day, the sunshine made it a place you wanted to stay, have a drink and meet people.
Images: my own
