Serpentine Gallery Pavilion: The Latest Architecture and News

Take a peek into SelgasCano's Serpentine Gallery Pavilion—which opened on June 22—through the lens of Romanian photographer Laurian Ghinitoiu.

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The 2015 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion was revealed today in London, showcasing the colorful plastic design by SelgasCano to the public for the first time. Consisting of a minimal steel frame wrapped in multi-colored ETFE sheets and webbing, the design is encompassed by "secret corridors" which provide access to the main internal space, inspired by the multi-layered and sometimes chaotic network of the London underground.

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With this year's Serpentine Pavilion in London scheduled to open next week, the Serpentine Gallery has released construction images of SelgasCano's multi-colored plastic shelter. The images by NAARO show the double-skinned ETFE-coated structure taking shape, and give an impression of the spatial experience offered by the "secret corridors" which circumnavigate and provide access to the interior space.

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The Serpentine Gallery has unveiled SelgasCano's designs for the 2015 Serpentine Pavilion in London, revealing a brightly-colored "chrysalis" structure created from a double skin of ETFE membrane wrapped in webbing. The Madrid-based duo were announced as the project's designers in December, joining the prestigious list of past pavilion designers which includes SANAA (2009), Jean Nouvel (2010), Peter Zumthor (2011), Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei (2012), Sou Fujimoto (2013), and last year's designer Smiljan Radić, among many others.

More on the pavilion, and SelgasCano's statement after the break.

Chilean architect Smiljan Radić’s shell-shaped Serpentine Pavilion has been relocated from Hyde Park to the gardens of Hauser & Wirth Somerset in Bruton. Just under three hours from London, the new site positions the translucent fiberglass structure in short proximity to a main gallery complex designed by Paris-based Argentine architect Luis Laplace and within an lush garden designed by Dutch landscape architect Piet Oudolf.

The latest designer of the prestigious Serpentine Gallery Pavilion has been named as SelgasCano, the Spanish practice known for their use of the latest synthetic materials and new technology. The Serpentine Pavilion, which has grown to become one of the most visited annual architecture attractions in the world, aims to provide architects who have never built in the UK their first chance to do so. In the past, this has led to pavilions by globally-recognized names such as Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas, Oscar Niemeyer, and Peter Zumthor, but in recent years the Serpentine Gallery seems to have changed course a little, instead bringing lesser-known, emergent stars to a much wider audience. This was true of Smiljan Radić and his 2014 pavilion, and will likely prove true for the duo of José Selgas and Lucía Cano.

Although designs for the 2015 pavilion will not be released until February, SelgasCano have promised "to use only one material... the Transparency," adding that "the most advanced technologies will be needed to be employed to accomplish that transparency." This coy description perhaps calls to mind the design of their own office, a partially sunken tube of a building with one side made entirely of curved glass, which won them widespread recognition in 2009.

To give a better idea of the design style that SelgasCano will bring to the 2015 Serpentine Pavilion, we've rounded up a number of their major projects for your viewing pleasure, after the break.

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Spanish architects SelgasCano have been selected to design the 2015 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, which has become one of the top-ten most visited architectural and design exhibitions in the world. The Pavilion will stand in Kensington Gardens during the summer and serving as a multi-purpose social space.

The award-winning studio is led by José Selgas and Lucía Cano and will be the first Spanish architecture practice to design a Serpentine Pavilion, with AECOM once again providing the engineering and technical design services. Although designs will not be revealed until February 2015, SelgasCano had this to say about designing the pavilion:

This is an amazing and unique opportunity to work in a Royal Garden in the centre of London. Both aspects, ‘Garden’ and ‘London’, are very important for us in the development of this project. We are in the middle of a garden, a ‘Royal’ garden indeed, once divided in two and separated by a Serpentine. That garden clings in the middle of London. Garden and London (which best defines London?) will be the elements to show and develop in the Pavilion. For that we are going to use only one material as a canvas for both: the Transparency. That ‘material’ has to be explored in all its structural possibilities, avoiding any other secondary material that supports it, and the most advanced technologies will be needed to be employed to accomplish that transparency. A good definition for the pavilion can be taken from J. M. Barrie: it aims to be as a ‘Betwixt-and-Between’.

Settled neatly in the quiet hum of London's Kensington Gardens rests Smiljan Radić's 2014 Serpentine Pavilion, an ethereal mass of carefully moulded fiberglass punctuated by precisely cut openings. Radić desired a structure that appears thin and brittle, yet was strong enough to support itself, and his affection for the rudimental layered qualities of papier-mâché - his maquette medium of choice - inspired the use of fiberglass by AECOM, who engineered Radić's wild ideas. In this article, originally published by Metropolis Magazine as "Paper-Thin Walls," an AECOM engineer explains their solution. Read on after the break to find out more.

Photography studio Hufton+Crow is the latest to capture the 2014 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, designed by Chilean architect Smiljan Radic. Step inside this glass-fibre reinforced plastic shell with Hufton+Crow’s photos after the break.

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Last week, the 2014 Serpentine Pavilion opened in London's Hyde Park. The Serpentine Pavilion program invites architects who are yet to work in the UK to create a temporary installation at the gallery's grounds for one summer, and this year it was the turn of Chilean architect Smiljan Radic, who rarely builds outside his native country and is arguably the least well-known architect in the Pavilion's 14 year history.

Always a highlight in London's architectural calender, critics almost line up to write their reviews. This year, they are almost entirely unanimous: Radic's pavilion is, unquestionably, weird. But they're also unanimous on another judgement: it may be one of the best Serpentine Pavilions yet.

Read on after the break to find out what the critics said about this year's design

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Architecture photographer Danica O. Kus has shared with us images of the 2014 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, designed by Chilean architect Smiljan Radić. For a closer look at this unusual pavilion, inspired by Oscar Wilde's short story The Selfish Giant, check out all of Ms. Kus' images after the break.

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The 2014 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, designed by Chilean architect Smiljan Radic, opened this morning in London's Hyde Park. The pavilion, a glass-fibre reinforced plastic shell resting on large quarry stones, was inspired by a papier mâché model which Radic created four years ago as a response to the Oscar Wilde story 'The Selfish Giant'.

Joining the ranks of Sou Fujimoto (2013), Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei (2012),Peter Zumthor (2011),Jean Nouvel (2010),SANAA (2009),and more, little-known Chilean architect Smiljan Radic will be the fourteenth architect to design London's Serpentine Gallery Pavilion. Renderings of his design reveal a semi-translucent, cylindrical structure that rests on large quarry stones.The pavilion, to open June 26th, will remain in Kensington Gardens for four months.