The temporary structure, due to open this month, will sit on the gallery’s lawn in Kensington Gardens, London until October. It will be the 13th summer pavilion and the third by a Japanese architect, following on from Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of SANAA (2009) and Toyo Ito (2002).
It will also see Fujimoto, at 41 the youngest of the architects who have accepted the invitation to create the temporary summer structure, follow in the footsteps of Jean Nouvel (2010), Frank Gehry (2008) and Zaha Hadid, who created the first pavilion in 2000. Last year Herzog & de Meuron partnered with Chinese artist Ai Weiwei to create a dug-out lined with cork and topped with a huge water-filled disc.
Widely acknowledged as one of the most important architects coming to prominence worldwide, Fujimoto is a leading light of a generation of artists reinventing our relationship with the built environment. Inspired by organic structures, such as the forest, the nest and the cave, Fujimoto’s signature buildings inhabit a space between nature and artificiality.
He has completed the majority of his buildings in Japan, with commissions ranging from the domestic, such as Final Wooden House, T House and House N, to the institutional, such as the Musashino Art Museum and Library, Toyko, for which Sou Fujimoto Architects won the 2012 Emirates Glass LEAF Awards.
On the theme of cloud formations, a recurrent motif in Fujimoto’s work, his design will create a geometric, cloud-like and semi-transparent structure in steel poles for the pavilion, which will occupy 350 sq m of lawn in front of the Serpentine Gallery. Fujimoto says it will appear ‘…as if it were mist rising from the undulations of the park. From certain vantage points, the pavilion will appear to merge with the classical structure of the Serpentine Gallery, with visitors suspended in space’.
Julia Peyton-Jones and Hans Ulrich Obrist, director and co-director of the Serpentine Gallery, said: ‘…Sou Fujimoto has conceived an extraordinary response to our invitation, and designed a structure that will enthral everyone that encounters it throughout the summer.’
Sou Fujimoto’s pavilion opens on 8 June, and will remain in place until 20 October.
