Ai Weiwei and Herzog & de Meuron - going underground...
Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei has once again hooked up with architects Herzog and de Meuron for the 2012 instalment of the Serpentine Pavilion, the designs for which have been unveiled today. The two last joined forces for the Beijing National Stadium, which was built for the 2008 Olympic Games (ooh edgy) and now, with the Olympics hitting London, they're back.
The Olympic theme extends not just to the choice of artist and designer but also to the choice of sponsor – none other than Usha and Lakshmi N Mittal, whose surname is simultaneously being, um, honoured in the form of the ArcelorMittal Orbit, Anish Kapoor's sci-fi monstrosity out east near the Olympic Park.
Fortunately, the Pavilion – the twelfth in the Serpentine's series of annual commissions – looks significantly more interesting than Kapoor's efforts. The idea is to take visitors beneath the Serpentine's lawn in order to examine the hidden histories of the previous eleven Pavilions. With its interior down at the level of the groundwater and clad in cork, in addition to a floating platform 1.4 metres above the ground, the Pavilion seeks to present an archaeological approach to architecture.
As Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei explain: “So many Pavilions in so many different shapes and out of so many different materials have been conceived and built that we tried instinctively to sidestep the unavoidable problem of creating an object, a concrete shape... A distinctive landscape emerges out of the reconstructed foundations, which is unlike anything we could have invented; its form and shape is actually a serendipitous gift.”
The Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2012 designed by Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei will be open from 1st June to 14th October 2012.
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