Since its launch in 2000, the Serpentine Pavilion has been providing renowned and emerging architects with a platform for design experimentation, becoming an important display of contemporary architecture. Each year, the commissioned architects and designers envision a temporary structure that speaks not only to their roots as creators, but also brings into focus what they consider to be important themes in the architectural world, from the need to redefine spaces for contemplation or conviviality, to explorations into the potential of natural materials or vernacular building techniques. On the day of the public opening of the 2024 Serpentine Pavilion, the "Archipelagic Void" designed by Korean architect Minsuk Cho and his firm Mass Studies, we look back at the last eight editions of the famous annual structure.
The official opening date for the 23rdSerpentine Pavilion has been announced for June 7th, 2024. The structure designed by Seoul-based Korean architect Minsuk Cho and his firm Mass Studies, will welcome visitors until October 27, 2024, in London’s Kensington Gardens. Titled “Archipelagic Void,” the pavilion is composed of five islands displayed around a central void in reference to the mandang, a type of open courtyard found in traditional Korean houses. The intervention will be activated throughout the summer with a diverse program of events, starting with a conversation between Minsuk Cho and Serpentine Artistic Director Hans Ulrich Obrist on June 7, 2024.
23rd Serpentine Pavilion by Mass Studies. Image Courtesy of Serpentine Gallery
Seoul-based Korean architect Minsuk Cho and his firm Mass Studies have been selected to design the 23rdSerpentine Pavilion, to open on June 5, 2024, in London’s Kensington Gardens. Titled “Archipelagic Void,” this iteration of the iconic commission will consist of five ‘islands’ displayed around an open space, breaking down the structure into a series of smaller elements intertwined with the park’s natural ecology. The pavilion will be open to the public from June 7, until October 27, 2024, with a press preview two days before the opening.
Today, the Korean Peninsula provides a striking example of a post-war polarization: two opposite political and economical systems, constantly presented in contrast/conflict by the global media, that still maintain an intricate, complicated relationship. Architecture’s role in this polarization was instrumental. North Korea sought to represent the aspirations of a new communist nation within a context devastated after the war -- a tabula-rasa from which adaptations of modernism could appear. In South Korea, fast economic growth bred a form of modernization that represented the ideals of a globalized world.
These distinct absorptions of modernity, and the relation between the two neighboring nations, are represented in Korea’s Pavilion in an exhibition called Crow’s Eye View, winner of the Gold Lion at the Venice Biennale 2014. The dense exhibition, commissioned and curated by Minsuk Cho together with Hyungmin Pai and Changmo Ahn, used every corner of the pavilion to represent this subject. The curators invited a multidisciplinary group of architects, urbanists, poets, writers, artists, photographers, film-makers, curators and collectors to demonstrate (to best of their availability, since official cooperation with North Korean institutions proved impossible) the architectural intersections and divisions between North and South Korea.
Recognized by the judges as “research in action,” Crow’s Eye View provided an invaluable addition to a discourse which has been predominantly carried by Western-centric narratives. And it is precisely this that, according to rumors, made it Koolhaas’ favorite pavilion.
