The prestigious London Serpentine Pavillion annually commissions leading architectural firms to design its pavilion and this year the Johannesburg based Counterspace Studio makes history because they are not only the youngest architects to awarded the commission but also the first South African firm.
The pioneering firm is lead by Sumayya Vally, Sarah de Villiers and Amina Kaskar, and they the youngest team of architects to take the commission in the Serpentine Pavilion’s 20-year-history.
Each year the Serpentine Galleries invite an architectural firm to experiment with the idea of a pavilion, creating a platform for new ideas. Notable names that have taken on the design challenge include Zaha Hadid, Frank Gehry and Jean Nouvel. Continuing this tradition of bold new thinking, Counterspace announced that they would be using both innovative and traditional building techniques, for instance, they will be using K-Briqs, an eco product manufactured from 90% recycled construction and demolition waste resulting in just a tenth of the carbon emissions that result from the production of normal bricks.
Using both innovative and traditional building techniques, Counterspace’s design will be based on gathering spaces and community places around the city, folding London into the Pavilion structure in Kensington Gardens, and extending a public programme across London.
The shapes of the Pavilion are created from a process of addition, superimposition, subtraction and splicing of architectural forms, directly transcribed from existing spaces with particular relevance to migrant and other peripheral communities in London.
The lead architect on the project, Sumayya Vally of Counterspace, said of the design:
“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, experienced through movement, it has continuity and consistency, but difference 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 to be together."
The architects were chosen by super-curator and the Serpentine’s artistic director, Hans Ulrich Obrist, who explained in a press statement that the Serpentine is excited to be working with Counterspace. ‘The idea of working with different communities is very important for us and Countearspace’s proposal does this in a remarkable way,’ he said. ‘We were totally convinced by the social dimension of their practice. They bring an African perspective, an international perspective, but they are working with locations and communities right here in London and their pavilion design is inspired by that work.’
The pavilion will launch, as it does every year, with the Serpentine’s famous summer party in June 2020, and remain open until 11 October 2020.
