While visiting this year’s Serpentine Pavilion, the ArchDaily team has a chance to sit down with French-Lebanese architect Lina Ghotmeh, the designer behind the temporary structure built in the Kensington Gardens in London. The conversation touched upon Ghotmeh’s motivations and concepts that prompted this pavilion titled À table, conceived as an invitation to sit down together at a table, to enjoy sharing food and engaging in open dialogues. Delving into her Lebanese roots, the architect also expands on her methodology and the desire to create space for conversation and decision-making while encouraging conviviality among people of different backgrounds and experiences. The ArchDaily team also talked to Hans Ulrich Obrist, artistic director at the Serpentine Galleries, about the pavilion as a platform for architecture and the arts.
According to the architect, the invitation to sit down at the table comes from an awareness of the roots each one maintains with their homeland, their customs around sharing meals, and finding a peaceful space for conversations and decision-making. By recreating this feeling, the temporary pavilion aims to capture the “zeitgeist”, the atmosphere that defines this moment in time and the important conversations it prompts: “What do we want to talk about today through architecture? What kind of message do we want to relay? “What is the meaning of what we build?”
I always thought that the first thing that relates us to Earth is really how and what we eat. So, I wanted to start with this, with this notion of getting a table together to think about our relationship to Earth, but also our relationship to each other. The starting point was this micro scale of the first space of sitting and meeting together. And then emerged the idea of covering, sheltering this space and the roof being this floating canopy that protects us, and yet remains open to its environment. – Lina Ghotmeh
In trying to find answers to these questions, Lina Ghotmeh describes how she turns to her methodology of “the archeology of the future.” Through this, she aims to bring indigenous knowledge, stories, and cultures into the architectural expression to give it specificity and to root it in its context. By taking knowledge from previous projects, each new one becomes a palimpsest of different layers and meanings.
The archaeology of the future is a methodology of work. It's about being able to bring specificity through every project, to bring an anchorage in the environment in the largest sense, through the living environment where we are sitting, the resources in place, and the historical and social narrative that is related to a project. That's what makes every project very different from one another and very anchored in their places. Although there is a sense of poetics and sense of materiality that I bring into each project, each one represent a different exploration of the material. – Lina Ghotmeh
One of the most important aspects of the pavilion is its materiality. Created from one predominant material wood, it represents a celebration of wooden constructions worldwide. The lightweight structure minimizes its carbon footprint while also being easily demountable. The interior space is generated directly through the structure of the pavilion, implying a minimal use of building materials. The fretted lattice work encloses the space while maintaining its connection with the surrounding park, and the pleated roof recreates the dynamic image of a carrousel. The shape of the building also allows for natural ventilation to create an enjoyable space for its visitors.
The 22nd Serpentine Pavilion opened to the public on June 9t, 2023 as a space dedicated to igniting conversations and prompting unexpected connections. Previous pavilions include those created by artist Theaster Gates, who designed a space for shared emotional and spiritual support in 2022, the deconstructed pavilion of Counterspace in 2021, created to reference multiple social spaces simultaneously, and Frida Escobedo’s 2018 pavilion created an enclosed courtyard exemplifying Mexican architecture building techniques.
