Download the free image bank teaching resource: 'Serpentine Gallery Pavilions 2000-2010' (PowerPoint, 617k).
Jean Nouvel’s vivid red pavilion is a startling contrast to the green backdrop of Hyde Park. The 10th in the Serpentine’s series of summer pavilions, this temporary structure will play host to an array of creative programming over the next four months.
Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2010 designed by Jean Nouvel © Ateliers Jean Nouvel. Photograph: Philippe Ruault
For the past 10 summers a series of architectural provocations have popped up by the Serpentine Gallery in Hyde Park. The aim of this programme is to introduce new audiences to contemporary architecture.
The rules are simple. There is no competition, no theme. The gallery invites a world-class contemporary architect to design a summer pavilion. Their design is constructed in six short weeks and remains in place from July to October. The only stipulation is that the architect must not have completed a building in the UK before. This year’s chosen architect cuts this very fine as his giant shopping and office complex beside St Paul’s Cathedral, One New Change, is due to be completed in Autumn 2010!
Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2010 designed by Jean Nouvel © Ateliers Jean Nouvel. Photograph: Philippe Ruault
Jean Nouvel fits the brief as a world-class architect. His commissions range from museums and galleries to telecoms towers and hotels around the world. With a passion for colour, form and the use of new technologies to create dreamlike buildings, great things were to be expected. And he has not disappointed. This year’s pavilion is red. Not just a little red, or a hint of red, or a touch of red. Every single bit is red, from the steel frame and rubber floor to the ping-pong table, bar fridges and café chairs. Every detail has been designed or chosen specifically by the architect. The inspiration for this bold colour choice? Well, there are the obvious references – London’s red buses, the red telephone booths and the sharp red jackets of the guards outside Buckingham palace. Mr. Nouvel adds that his main inspiration was the sun – specifically that pulsing red glow you get when you close your eyes on a hot summer’s day.
Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2009 designed by SANAA Architects © iamnewpictures, flickr.com
Teaching ideas:
Past pavilions have played with technology, material surfaces and physics to create engaging and often challenging structures. Take a look at ways they can be used in your lessons. Download our image bank: 'Serpentine Gallery Pavilions 2000-2010' (PowerPoint, 617k).
Art and Design:
Use your local area as inspiration in designing your own pavilion. Think about where it could be situated – a park, a round-a-bout or a hard landscaped space. Use this choice to guide you in your choice of materials. Perhaps you would like to reflect the environment, be camouflaged or clash wildly.
Students can incorporate local oddities into the design. Just as Jean Nouvel was inspired to use red, perhaps a local crest, flag or famous structure could inform their choice of shape or colour.
History:
In 2005 Portuguese architects Alvaro Siza and Eduardo Souto De Moura adapted the medieval building practice of mortise and tenon to create staggered joints instead of a straight-lined structure. Simple and strong, the mortise and tenon joint has been used for thousands of years by woodworkers around the world to join pieces of wood, usually when the pieces are at an angle close to 90°. The architects reinterpreted this traditional building method to produce a contemporary-style structure.
Investigate these and other types of historical building practices and materials and discuss how they might be used in a modern building.
Helpful resources:
- BBC resource on building materials based on the story of the Three Little Pigs
- Weald and Downland open air museum resource on Wattle and Daub
Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2005 designed by Alvaro Siza and Eduardo Souto De Moura © megapiksel, flickr.com
As in past years the Serpentine has created a whole series of events around the pavilion. There will be sleepovers, film screenings and talks. The pavilion will be open to the public every day and is designed as a shared space for all.
The Serpentine pavilion is open to the public from 10 July until 17 October.
Find out more about the Serpentine's architecture and education programmes.
