Serpentine Gallery‘s annual architecture pavilion is the built world’s equivalent of viral video trailers: everyone’s buzzing about an end product they have zero information about. This year, even more so, as somewhat mysterious Swiss architect Peter Zumthor plots his sure-to-be-cerebral Serpentine Pavilion for London’s Hyde Park.

Today, the gallery released two (admittedly vague) renderings of the temporary space, which will be Zumthor’s first completed building in the UK and the gallery’s 11th such exhibition space. The big news? It will include a secret garden by Dutch designer Piet Oudolf, who also consulted on the High Line in New York City.

Click through to read more details.

According the gallery’s press release, Zumthor says his design, which emphasizes the sensory and emotional role of architecture, ‘aims to help its audience take the time to relax, to observe and then, perhaps, start to talk again – maybe not.’ As he is wont to do, the architect creates “contemplative spaces that evoke the spiritual dimension of our physical environment with a refined selection of materials.”  His work is entirely aesthetic, but not esoteric, as the end goal is experiential and not just intellectual.

The concept: “The hortus conclusus, a contemplative room, a garden within a garden. The building acts as a stage, a backdrop for the interior garden of flowers and light. Through blackness and shadow one enters the building from the lawn and begins the transition into the central garden, a place abstracted from the world of noise and traffic and the smells of London – an interior space within which to sit, to walk, to observe the flowers.”

The materials: “The experience will be intense and memorable, as will the materials themselves – full of memory and time. The 2011 Pavilion will be constructed of a lightweight timber frame wrapped with scrim and coated with a black paste mixed with sand.”

The program: “Exterior and interior walls with staggered doorways will offer multiple paths for visitors to follow, gently guiding them to a central, hidden inner garden. The covered walkways and seating surrounding this central space will create a serene, contemplative environment from which visitors may look onto the richly planted sunlit garden, the heart and focus of the building.”

All information courtesy of Serpentine Gallery.

by Kelsey Keith

posted in Events news

tagged london, peter zumthor, piet oudolf, serpentine pavilion, temporary

more articles by Kelsey Keith