This year's pavilion at the Serpentine Galleries opened to the public today. Designed by Francis Kéré, Hon. FAIA, founder and principal of Berlin-based Kéré Architecture, the structure is the 17th annual commission at the London museum. (Check out past year's pavilions in ARCHITECT's Project Gallery.)
"The proposed design for the 2017 Serpentine Pavilion," Kéré said in a statement, "is conceived as a micro cosmos—a community structure within Kensington Gardens that fuses cultural references of my home country Burkina Faso with experimental construction techniques."
Kéré derived the pavilion's form from a tree in Gando, Burkina Faso—his hometown—which is used as a gathering space. While on the museum grounds, the structure will host events including a picnic talk series, Radical Kitchen, and the museum's Park Night site-specific series.
"My design for the Serpentine Pavilion has a great over-hanging roof canopy made of steel and a transparent skin covering the structure," Kéré said in the statement, "which allows sunlight to enter the space while also protecting it from the rain. Wooden shading elements line the underside of the roof to create a dynamic shadow effect on the interior spaces."
The 2017 Serpentine Pavilion is open from June 23 through Oct. 8, 2017. View more images of the 2017 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in ARCHITECT's Project Gallery.
